




TOJten 










dtp 

i}A V 

ill, 1 

wt 


§1 

vfw* 

p 1 

Hi,: 

• -4‘ 




>■.1: '."'-A 




. 

% . 

i'*? ? V l{ 

♦*-*. % *fi*^ 



}\VM 

-r 

f if . 

vm-.n 







' >«?, 


■s 






> A A y r % 

A' <p ° ^ 

rL> V* i 1 *^^ X C.' 

A O ^ <6 

\ o N C * * 0 ^ * V > » * '4 

% -P C' x V ^/^2^ “* * v, 

✓ <>» v *■ J k . ^V \J> 

* o o x - -* ^ > 

* 4 

- .V ^ ^ 

c^ y 


0 N 

& s 

o, y / 

0 Q o 


K-^Jr. J 

x-A 

\\I ^Sl y 



>.',#' e- *A> v° 

o** f <- > .< 5 * »’ *° 

<?■,, ,\\> * 4 r%>hv% « '£>■ <1 - *• 


A% 


,V 



<G V p y 

iv «, V ' » 4 '<p 

^ v ^ i 'P <A * 

‘ '" * ~Kp -i> 

S^ 1 J - > ? »w. 

X 0 o x , 




-i ' y ^ ~ a. v ■* "* » " -& 

» * 1 * 0 ,< X . 0 * C „ %,’ >/ ' ° * 1 * A< 

•*, o° 4 *^% *, w* 

■>u *■ <&MzP x >. -*V <» 


5- *=,»’/ , <?*. ».,!*’ ^ 

> A 0 ' V 

. A* ' A. ,v * 

A- v * $$&/,h ° <i- .A » ^ 

w * 5 ^ ™ 


2 ^ - 'mm * <*? .v - > 

y N ir-iVi /-2-. * ~?r+. «A *■ 

; ^ > : -vpa '. *fe o' . 

_ w * jOe,. ' x * 

9 - # ;> 6 \ > •«,%' * ■ - ’* ' 

*' ^ ^-*4^ * 'Pu ^A ^ f(\% A, r ' V“ A- ^ * 

\\ « 




o 5 ^ 



(■w 
v «? 



* aV - 

* 'V ■> 

„ . •* A O /y / 

0 e X \ v >i „ ' 


’ flV - 

A° <. 

* r. ^ 4 • «^ 

«” °x. * 







. y ''X^O— «, (A. 

^ (V _ A .A) 


v 0 


> 


+ '-zz> 

° ^ ° A°^ ^ ' * 0 ^ °% 

.o V- 




% ^ 


A 



V ^ v 


^ X/ / , * S ' \^p 


« rp 

« oV 

■V /* V 



„ M „ ■>* . 0 ° ^ 

. 0 ^ ^ v * 0 ^ 

\A v- <? & « 


■ < S* 




^ ^%q 

v ' 8 ' ° * X * ^ c 0 N c ♦ 7 * * ° o 

1 ■P » A-^S^rv ^ ^ 0 ^ 

* >. " ' 

•< r w 

» * 

o j ,0 c^ f >• 

A. y * o' 7 o ’* A,o° \ ^ 

, 0 ^ % x 0 /> ^ ‘ 

.A ^ k 3 ^ 



0 V v <- v ‘ 0 « . V 


A 



■’io' 


\ v ^ 

+~ * <l '* V 8M 






„A %. av 



O 



_ ^ ^ V. . 

^ ^ ^ - Hf 

* A' K-> * W, V 

• 

A. r O ** / 

. \ rt >J z 1 -A. ^ » 


J °-^ J> o^c.'V -- 

.** .‘!«* %o 0 o°V 

■"o o’* » 






,-V ’ * 

' s ' .V « , C. ‘ . 

A % •** . 4 .' C 

. * -V. vP * , 

^ t ^ ^ f 

•> = >° °x. - ^ 

_ 

<V „ . n ^ r\ - Au, ^ 


* S i Dv^ * ^ « *>• f* t < ° 

*•****■.' f>- ^ %P„’* ,0° c o . 

5§3 *, «c ^ .’*%#»> A, .A • 



* V/ '<?' ^ “ c^' ~si - i 

j* < '-1?^ A °o,'"7 w T''^ 

* c- 5 >SN\ ^ V* 0 v V . 

AN s. ,-Sf V ^ 

p\* 





v-- ^ 5 x ° ' x ,.,,,, w 

\y Vf. / * c zy, / jjl{iW 

CL ■ y ^ /O Cl ^ t--^^ ^ 

v* %*•■«• V ***.,% *••’* 
■>. <& AaWa v %■ & 

o <2 ^ ° * -v 

« A * Op ^ * <P 


A Xl xl 

A •*-. ^ 


: z °Wm^ J*% l%pP 

r> A \ .■Q» V * S> «4 


> a r • ‘wai : ~ ° x • 

\° °x<. >• - o> ^ - 

VPrP'V' V*»T. v / 

• ,>•*, ^ " V> %'*’'* > ,0^ * 

.^Vr. ■%» .,v 














































































































































































































































































VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


BY THE SAME AUTHOR 


CHIP 

SAM’S KID 
ATONEMENT 
GRIT LAWLESS 
THE PURPLE MISTS 
MYLES CALTHORPE, I.D.B. 
A MISTAKEN MARRIAGE 


VALLEY OF A 
THOUSAND HILLS 

By F. E. MILLS YOUNG 


NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY 
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD 
TORONTO: BELL & COCKBURN : : MCMXIV 



P'2-3 





Copyright, 1914, 

By John Lane Company 




OCT 20 1914 

©CI.A387101 ' 

'Kn. 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 



VALLEY OF A 
THOUSAND HILLS 


I 

T HE chief engineer looked darkly after the dis- 
appearing figure of the passenger, his look of 
annoyance deepening, as though the set of the 
man’s shoulders, seeming to express their owner’s 
disgust, as he made for the saloon opening and stepped 
out upon the iron deck, excited his rising ire. Then 
he turned his lowering countenance towards the cap- 
tain, seated at the head of the table, and made his 
appeal to authority in a protest that was half a re- 
buke. 

“I wonder you don’t interfere,” he said. 

“What’s the use? . . . The food’s there, — it’s take 
it, or leave it,” the captain was beginning, when he 
broke off abruptly to swear at the steward for wash- 
ing his thumbs in the gravy in the plate he was set- 
ting before him. 

The chief engineer was not satisfied. 

“It makes my gorge rise,” he remarked, “to hear 
that chap always finding fault with his grub. . . . I’ll 
say something to ’im one of these days.” 

The captain, who was a gentleman as well as the 
skipper of a “tramp,” glanced at the speaker with a 
faintly amused smile. Neither the smile, nor the 

7 


8 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


carelessly uttered warning, — “Well, see that you don’t 
annoy him,” tended to pacify the irate engineer. 

“I’ll say something to ’im,” he muttered darkly. 
“It puts me off my feed to ’ear ’im talk.” 

The passenger, meanwhile, having gained the deck, 
was leaning disconsolately over the side, unconscious 
of the discussion his distaste for the rough fare had 
raised, and feeling, as he watched the grey, white- 
crested waves running towards him and smacking 
against the vessel’s side, so unutterably miserable, 
so disturbed internally, that the daintiest food if of- 
fered would have seemed an insult, so that, even 
had he overheard, it was possible the engineer’s dark 
threat to “say something” would not have disconcerted 
him greatly. In all likelihood he would have told 
him off to those remote regions to which men in 
their anger are carelessly wont to consign the objects 
of their wrath. Yet he was not naturally ill-tem- 
pered or ill-natured; under existing conditions he 
was both. 

Anthony Heckraft was thirty, and he had never 
known before what it was to rough it. Roughing it 
had appealed strongly to him in theory. There is 
an effeminacy in the idea of a man swathed from 
his birth in comfort, against which he instinctively 
rebelled ; the time arrives for the putting off of 
swaddling clothes. But that time had only dawned 
for Heckraft when domestic troubles robbed him of 
a comfortable income; and he was discovering in 
this, his first experience, that, in practice, roughing 
it, though doubtless the splendid inheritance of every 
virile son of Adam, requires a certain amount of 
training before a man can thoroughly gauge his 
capacity for endurance. And yet, though utterly dis- 
tasteful, he knew it was the discipline he stood in 
need of. When the body is habitually pampered the 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


9 


mind is apt to suffer enervation, the entire forces, 
physical and mental, are in danger of debilitation. 
Heckraft was aware that his splendid strength, which 
he had never fully exerted, was a force wasted, a 
benefit he could not appreciate because it had never 
been thoroughly tried ; he realised that his active brain 
was a still greater force representing a still greater 
waste; it had been allowed to lie fallow so long, had 
been so neglected and ill-nurtured that it had become 
more or less atrophied. It would take time and 
strong endeavour and discipline to bring these wasted 
forces into condition. And at the very outset he was 
rebelling against the discipline. He would not have 
turned back, had that been possible. He had made 
up his mind to face life; the smooth path was his 
no longer; he had to hew out a road for himself, 
as others had been forced to do. Thanks to his 
splendid physique, he was better qualified for the 
task than many who undertook it. 

But though his determination was great, he took 
no pleasure in the prospect before him, nothing but 
the grim knowledge that he had to make his own 
way in life, and a very clear conception of the waste 
he had made of it hitherto, added to a reluctance — 
greater, because more worthy, than the reluctance to 
relinquish his ease — a shamed reluctance to continue 
this prodigal squandering of his powers, held him to 
his purpose. He had to go forth and conquer life — 
or go under. To a man of Anthony Heckraft’s tem- 
perament the alternative was not worthy of considera- 
tion. There could be no such thing as failure. 

While he stood there, staring moodily down into 
the grey broken waters in which the heavily laden 
but ill-ballasted cargo boat was tumbling wantonly, 
his bodily discomfort conflicting with and aggravat- 
ing his mental distress, Walford, the first officer, 


io VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


strolled up and joined him. He was a big, fair man 
with a choleric blue eye, and a temper that excited 
itself unexpectedly without any apparent cause, for 
which reason he was more disliked than respected 
by the crew, and his brother officers, who exerted 
their diplomacy in dealing with him solely in recogni- 
tion of his rank. This man, who was about the pas- 
senger’s own age, showed a predilection for Heck- 
raft’s society, which, possibly, was less the outcome 
of affinity than of a certain consciousness that here 
too was a man against whom life held a grudge, a 
man who was up against the world and inclined to 
quarrel with it. Heckraft had not confided in him; 
he was not one to discuss his private affairs with 
any chance acquaintance; but the sailor was a judge 
of character, and he had summed his man up un- 
erringly, — save that he inclined to exaggerate mat- 
ters; being of a pessimistic bent, he painted his can- 
vases in the darkest hues. 

“Bit off colour?” he inquired, slouching up, and 
leaning beside the other with his arms on the sticky 
rail. 

Heckraft raised his eyes from the heaving waters 
and looked at the speaker gloomily. 

“I feel beastly rotten,” he said. 

The officer nodded sympathetically. In his opinion 
the man looked exactly what he had described himself 
as feeling. He was green about the gills. The strong, 
pleasant, but at no time handsome, face was drawn 
and grey, and there was a two days’ growth of hair 
which did not add to its attractiveness. As Heck- 
raft reflected, feeling the stubble on his chin, no man, 
unless he contemplated suicide, would dream of shav- 
ing; and he was not feeling sufficiently comfortable 
to trouble about such things, otherwise he was aware 
that one of the seamen, who barbered indiscrim- 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS n 


inately, would have removed the growth for a con- 
sideration. 

“We’ll be out of the Bay this afternoon,” the 
sailor observed by way of consolation. 

“But a man ought not to feel seasick with that 
amount of sea,” Heckraft complained. . . . “Shows 
a want of balance.” 

The officer smiled grimly. 

“They’ve loaded her like a lot of counter-jump- 
ers,” he explained. “But then we don’t reckon on 
passengers. There’s no accommodation.” 

Heckraft, whose complaint had been in reference 
to his personal deficit and no reflection on the ves- 
sel’s ballasting, merely nodded. He was travelling 
by the Ariadne from motives of economy, and, since 
she was not a passenger boat, was entered in the 
ship’s book as purser. The arrangement had been 
brought about through a friend of his who happened 
to be connected with one of the owners. Through 
another friend he had obtained the position he was 
going out to South Africa to fill; so that, as he 
recognised, his first steps upon the road of inde- 
pendence had been hewn for him by others. 

“I’ve been afloat since I was a boy,” Walford said 
musingly, “and I still feel squeamish whenever 
there’s a bit of a sea on. . . . That’s in steam ; aboard 
a windjammer I’m as happy as I should be ashore. 
It’s all steam now,” he added disparagingly. “I don’t 
suppose there’s anyone aboard this boat, with the 
exception of myself — and possibly the old man — who 
would know how to sail a ship if the engines broke 
down, — that’s why the engineers put on such an 
amount of swank. Theoretical training isn’t worth 
much when put to the test.” 

As though to justify his repudiation of the super- 
iority of steam over canvas, something did go wrong 


12 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


in the engine-room, and the Ariadne lay helpless, 
bobbing about in the trough of the waves, while the 
engineers worked hard for six hours putting matters 
right. At the end of the six hours she was got under 
way again, and everyone, with the exception of the 
first officer, was out of humour, — the captain on ac- 
count of the delay, and the engineers because of the 
extra work and the knowledge that it would be nec- 
essary to nurse the engines during the rest of the 
voyage. But Walford went about with a bland smile 
as a man who, his opinion being backed by results, 
feels his case proved. 

“I hope you aren’t due to arrive in Durban by any 
particular date?” he remarked pleasantly to Heck- 
raft, who lay supine on one of the hatches, wrapped 
in his travelling rug, cursing everything with the un- 
reasoning irritability of seasickness. 

“Why? Does this delay mean much?” he asked. 

“A matter of half a day. If nothing further hap- 
pens we shall get into Las Palmas six hours late, 
that’s all. We coal there, and they have a funny lit- 
tle habit of keeping tramps waiting. ... You are go- 
ing out to a job, aren’t you?” 

Heckraft, as he met the inquisitive blue eye real- 
ised that these disturbing confidences were merely 
the means by which the speaker sought to disguise 
a desire to gain information concerning him. He 
rolled over and half sat up. 

“Yes; I’m going out to a job,” he said. “But a 
day or two won’t make any difference to me.” 

“I see. What part of Natal are you bound for? 
Going to stop in Durban?” 

“No. I’m going a few miles out, — about a couple 
of hours’ journey by train. Drummond is the name 
of the place.” 

“Never heard of it,” the other answered, which 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 13 


was not surprising; his South African geography be- 
ing limited to a knowledge of the ports of call, and 
Drummond, though on the main line, being suffi- 
ciently unimportant to remain obscure and little 
known even to Natalians, despite the wonder of its 
scenery, its high altitude, and the health-giving quali- 
ties of its soft mist-laden air. 

“That’s likely enough,” Heckraft responded. 
“There’s nothing but wattle plantations there — and 
blacks, I believe.” 

“What on earth takes you to a place like that?” 
his companion demanded. “Africa’s big enough. . . . 
Why don’t you make for the mines?” 

“I’m going on to a plantation — as manager,” Heck- 
raft explained. 

The choleric blue eyes opened wider. 

“Lord! You won’t make a fortune in wattles,” 
their owner announced with gloomy conviction. “And 
you can’t make companions of niggers. . . . You’ll 
take to drink.” The speaker looked down suddenly 
at the big, reclining figure resting on its elbow, and 
partially covered by the rug, and asked abruptly, — 
“Married?” 

“No.” Heckraft threw off the rug and came to a 
sitting posture. “I should rather fancy you knew all 
about me,” he said. 

The officer smiled queerly. 

“I’m damned if I’ll take any further interest in 
you,” he remarked amiably, and walked away forth- 
with ; and Heckraft sat on the hatch, nursing 
his knee, and looking after him as he strode 
along the deck, his peaked cap pulled forward 
over his eyes, his coat-collar turned up, meeting the 
stiff breeze which was blowing fresh from the 
south-east and driving before it a grey, salt- 
laden haze. 


i 4 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


It was cold on deck, and cheerless. The gleam 
of wet rusty iron caught the eye, of wet masts 
against a darkening grey sky which, with the constant- 
ly shifting line of the horizon, appeared to be making 
rapid semi-revolutions, as though nature were bent 
on demonstrating to the naked eye how the world re- 
volves on its axis, and, thinking better of it, swing- 
ing abruptly back again to its centre. 

Heckraft stood up, and throwing the rug over his 
arm, made his uncertain way towards the entry. It 
was stuffy in the cabin, stuffier still in his berth, but 
the dampness and the cold wind drove him to seek 
shelter. 

The steward was laying the table for the evening 
meal, which on board the Ariadne was a compromise 
between tea and supper, making up in substantiality 
what it lacked in daintiness. By no stretch of the 
imagination could it have been dignified by the term 
dinner. Heckraft experienced a nauseating reluc- 
tance to participate in the meal, but he had been so 
unmercifully chaffed on the one occasion that he had 
absented himself from the table that he had since 
forced himself to make the effort to sit down with 
the rest, though the idea of food revolted him, and 
the smell of it made him sick. 

When he took his seat as usual that evening oppo- 
site the chief engineer, the latter, having been twice 
ruffled that day, and being in no mood to silently en- 
dure the fastidious passenger’s criticism of food that 
was good enough for himself, glanced across at him 
sharply, the keen eyes under their bushy brows con- 
veying mutely that their owner intended “saying\ 
something” if the passenger annoyed him. Heckraft, 
quite unconscious that he was giving offence, im- 
patiently waved aside the plate of Irish stew which the 
steward tentatively proffered, and despatched that 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 15 


bewildered person in search of a ship’s biscuit and a 
cup of coffee, — anything fit to eat. 

“You don’t seem to like your food,” the engineer 
remarked, leaning half way across the table, and 
speaking with a suavity that would have prepared any- 
one familiar with him for something particularly 
scathing to follow. 

Realising that the speech was intended for him, 
Heckraft looked up from his plate to stare. 

“Eh?” he said. 

The engineer glanced eloquently at the captain be- 
fore returning to the attack. 

“I say, you don’t seem to like your food,” he re- 
peated with less suavity and an increase of sarcasm 
in his tones, and added crushingly: “Fancies your- 
self a bit of an epigram, don’t you?” 

“I shut ’im up, sir,” he boasted to the captain later. 
“ ’E ’adn’t a word to say for ’imself.” 

Which was literally true. To such a charge Heck- 
raft had felt there was no possible answer. 

The captain merely smiled as he walked away. But 
from that time onward he evinced an interest in his 
discontented passenger which he had not shown be- 
fore, an interest that went so far as the placing of 
his state-room at the latter’s disposal during the day, 
and such simple additions to comfort which experi- 
ence had taught him to be of importance on the high 
seas. Thus unintentionally the chief engineer bene- 
fited the man lie despised, the man who was hewing 
out a road for his feet to travel, and had uncon- 
sciously turned the first spadeful that evening at 
table. It is so easy to be superior at the expense of 
ignorance, that the human being proves his right to 
respect whose consideration places him above such 
paltry triumphs. 


II 


T HE Ariadne , as Walford had so pessimistically 
foretold, was kept waiting at Las Palmas 
while the more important liners were supplied 
with fuel. While she lay at anchor, waiting to be 
coaled, Heckraft went ashore, as did the captain, and 
lesser members of the crew, to whom the compulsory 
idleness was a blessing in disguise, and therefore a 
benefit that might be enjoyed grudgingly and be made 
a subject for grumbling, which seems to add to the 
value of human gratification. 

Heckraft spent the greater part of the day in the 
wildly beautiful grounds of the Santa Catalina, that 
lay sandwiched between the blue of the sea and the 
yellow line of the sandhills behind it. The squalid 
town and gaudy bazaars held little attraction for him. 
But it was good to feel the solid ground beneath his 
feet once more, and to realise that from henceforth 
he would be in summer seas and no longer tormented 
with the internal disturbances which had made the 
first part of the voyage such a ghastly nightmare. 

Towards sunset, pleasantly tired with the heat and 
the glare of the island, he returned to the ship, to 
find her decks practically deserted, and only the third 
officer, who was commonly known as Johnny, lean- 
ing upon the rail, smoking the inevitable briar. Heck- 
raft joined him and fell into desultory talk. 

“I suppose it doesn’t interest you to go ashore?” 
he remarked, not particularly concerned as to the 
young man’s tastes but wishful to be conversational 
16 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 17 

Johnny removed the briar from his mouth and spat 
into the sea. 

“I’d go fast enough if there was anything to go 
for,” he confided. “But it only means getting rid 
of money there is plenty of use for, and not suf- 
ficient satisfaction for the outlay. The second’s gone. 
. . . He’s got a girl on shore. She’s teaching some 
Spanish kids. He doesn’t seem to get much fun 
out of it. . . . If he does, he hides it fairly success- 
fully, — always comes aboard nervy, if you know 
what I mean.” 

Heckraft, who had not yet heard this euphonism 
for ill-temper, a misapplication for which the chief 
officer was indirectly responsible, took the term liter- 
ally, and nodded vaguely. 

“Can’t say I was ever troubled with nerves my- 
self,” he answered. . . . “Don’t know what they are.” 

“Ask the chief,” said Johnny with a grin. 

The chief was at that moment coming along the 
deck. He paused beside the passenger, and while 
they looked- out together upon the long broken coast- 
line, upon the arid hills, and straggling town domi- 
nated by the black towers of the cathedral, he sought 
for enlightenment on the subject of neurosis, less 
again from curiosity than from the lazy desire to con- 
verse on the first topic that offered. 

“Nerves!” said the chief officer expressively. 
“Great Scott ! I should think I do know what nerves 
are. I lost my girl through my confounded nerves, 
and though I’ve travelled the world over, I never met 
her equal; and that’s why I’m still a bachelor, — and 
likely to remain one.” 

He filled his pipe slowly, and lighted it with a delib- 
eration that betokened preoccupation, and then thrust 
the stem almost savagely between his teeth, his blue 
eyes shining with latent fire suggestive of a passion- 


18 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


ate disposition, which the owner thereof had so fre- 
quently described as neurotic that the misnomer had 
become an accepted term for any violence of temper 
among those who suffered through the frequent neu- 
rotic outbursts. 

“It was before I got into steam/’ he added reminis- 
cently. “I was mate of a smart little brig then, and 
the skipper was part owner. . . . Gad ! I should have 
dropped into a neat thing if that girl hadn’t chucked 
me. She was his daughter.” 

“Whose daughter?” inquired the third, who was 
losing the thread of the story. 

“The brig’s, of course,” retorted his superior con- 
temptuously. “You’ve got so many ideas, Johnny, that 
they’re apt to stray. But it don’t matter ; you needn’t 
listen.” 

“I’m listening all right,” rejoined Johnny quickly, 
anxious to prevent a nervous attack, which, had their 
relative positions been reversed, he would not have 
troubled to do. “Only I didn’t want to mix things. 
Fire ahead.” 

“She went the voyage with us,” resumed the other 
slowly between the puffs of smoke. “I shall never 
forget my first sight of her. I was busy getting ready 
for sailing. ... A mate’s got to put his hands to the 
ropes aboard a sailing vessel, and not shout his 
orders to other people ” 

“I know,” put in Johnny testily. 

“No doubt you do,” returned the other sarcastically. 
“But you have never been a voyage in a sailer for all 
that. I’ve spent most of my time in them, and I pre- 
fer them infinitely to steam. Anyway, I was pretty 
busy, and pretty black when I first caught sight of 
Mollie, and she looked me over as she might have 
done a cabin boy, and walked aft like any princess. 
She was a clinker, and no mistake, — good figure, 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 19 

good points, and a mischievous, taking way that made 
a fellow want to do great things to show her what a 
fine chap he was.” 

He broke off, and, sighing deeply, puffed at his 
pipe for a few seconds in a silence which neither 
of his listeners broke. They too smoked, and gazed 
absently out across the water. 

“Extra navigating officer, her father called her,” 
the chief proceeded after the pause. “It made me 
smile, for I had a notion of the kind of navigating it 
was likely to be. But I was mistaken. That girl 
could handle a ship — I was going to say, better than 
I could, — anyway, long chalks better than you could, 
Johnny, and better than her father too. I was fairly 
surprised to see her do a whole watch without so 
much as thinking of being relieved, but to see her 
take watch in dirty weather used to make my ” 

“Nerves bad,” suggested the third. 

“She’d go on duty in the old man’s oil-skins as 
gay as a bird,” resumed the narrator, without heed- 
ing the interruption. “She took her job seriously, — 
a bit too seriously for me; there was too much of 
the first mate about her. She was rather fond of in- 
terfering with my work, thought she could teach me 
things that I thought she couldn’t; and we used to 
get nasty over it at times, — though I was sorry 
enough afterwards, and ready to allow I was wrong. 
I was only twenty-two at that time, and inclined to 
be touchy about my dignity. That’s all been knocked 
out of me since, but it’s taken eight years to accom- 
plish. She had a habit of laughing at me which 
used to get my back up, and I fancy she looked 
down on me too a little; but it was a nine months’ 
voyage, and that doesn’t necessitate any violent hurry, 
like in these steam packets, which hardly give a fellow 
time to make up his mind. 


20 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


“We were somewhere about Sierra Leone when I 
began to make some headway with her ; and one even- 
ing during a thunder storm when the lightning played 
round the decks like hell fire, and she was scared 
out of her wits — as I was myself, though I didn’t 
let her guess it — we came to a proper understanding.” 

He paused for a moment, and his sombre eyes bright- 
ened while his thoughts turned back and wandered 
in pleasant by-ways of the past. When he spoke again 
his voice was tenderly reminiscent. 

“After that, the days passed like — like — Have you 
ever been in love, Johnny?” 

“Of course I have,” answered the third in the 
tone of a man who feels himself insulted by the 
question. 

“Then you know what they passed like. ... I 
look back on that time now and wish that the in- 
fernal water-spout had burst over the ship.” 

“What water-spout?” inquired Heckraft, naturally 
enough. 

“I’m coming to that presently,” the other rejoined 
with undisguised impatience. “It was the water-spout 
that did the mischief.” 

“They often do,” interposed Johnny with quicken- 
ing interest. “I remember ” 

“Quit that,” said Walford. “I’m doing the remem- 
bering just now.” 

The third relapsed into sulky silence, and smoked 
his pipe with a moody eye on the land, which was 
no further off than his attention, the latter being far 
from enchained by his senior’s reminiscences. 

“Well, as I was saying, those days were like 
heaven. The old man had given his consent, though 
he wasn’t keen on the match. He was a warm man 
and his daughter might have done better.” 

The third acquiesced with a nod, and the speaker 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 21 


broke off suddenly to glare at him ; but, as the other 
was still staring stolidly at the coast-line, he realised 
the uselessness of trying to annihilate him with a 
look, and so resumed the thread of his yarn. 

“1 daresay he wouldn’t have been so decent about 
it, but he knew that if I chose I could talk when I got 
ashore, and make things unpleasant for him in the ship- 
ping world; so he swallowed his feelings and made 
the best of the matter; and Mollie and I spooned 
openly, and enjoyed ourselves no end. It was too 
great to last, I suppose, so Providence intervened, — 
which is where the water-spout comes in that you 
were so anxious to hear about.” 

Johnny grunted. The grunt was as expressive as 
any verbal denial; but Walford seemed scarcely to 
notice it, and continued as though the grunt had 
been one of assent. 

“The rum part is, that though that water-spout was 
to influence the rest of my life, I don’t remember 
now where we were when we sighted it, though I 
noted it in the log-book myself. I’ve seen several 
in my time, but I was never so near to one before, 
and, Gad! I hope I shan’t be again. It was right 
over the ship. All hands were busy at the sails, my- 
self included, and the old man was giving his orders 
with a face on him I shall never forget. He was in 
a mortal funk. I never remember anyone look less 
anxious to quit this vale of tears. He was naturally 
a lazy man, but he worked like a blessed trinity that 
day. Mollie was down below, and didn’t know any- 
thing about it. There was a good deal of scuffling 
and noise going on, but in a sailing vessel one gets 
used to that ; and presently she came up on deck smil- 
ing gaily, as though we weren’t all looking death 
in the face and trying to tack out of its road. She 
came over to me, nearly tripping over the ropes lying 


22 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


about. I was hauling away for dear life, with one 
eye on the water-spout, and the other cocked aloft, 
and I didn’t see her till I bumped right against her. 
I nearly knocked her over; but she was a good-tem- 
pered girl, and I heard her laugh lightly as she 
righted herself. 

“ T wish you’d look where you’fe going,’ she said. 

“I glanced round sharply. She was laughing right 
in my face. Glory! it gave me a queer feeling with 
that horror over our heads. There wasn’t time for 
me to more than glance at her, but my nerves were 
pretty bad, as anyone’s would have been in the cir- 
cumstances, and I just shouted, as I swung round with 
the rope ready for tacking: 

“ ‘Get out of my way, silly. You’ll be grinning in 
your grave in a minute.’ 

“She didn’t answer anything, but I know she looked 
up and caught sight of a water-spout. I reckon it 
was the first she’d seen, but it didn’t require much 
knowledge of their ways to recognise the danger. I 
hadn’t time then to notice whether she went below or 
stayed where she was. I was so blankety sure we 
were going to be swamped that I could think of noth- 
ing else. And we weren’t, after all. We got clear by 
a miracle. The thing burst to starboard clear of the 
ship. But it was the nearest shave I’ve ever seen, 
and it left us all pretty limp. 

“I was on deck helping to shorten sail when the 
old man came running up in such a hurry that I 
feared we had sprung a leak or something, and my 
nerves began to jump again. 

“ ‘George,’ he shouted, ‘what did you say to frighten 
my girl? She’s on the cabin floor in a dead faint.’ 

“It seemed he’d been down for a nip, which was 
his way of returning thanks to Providence for mer- 
cies shown, and he’d found Mollie in a heap on the 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 23 


cabin floor almost at the foot of the companion. My 
heart thumped. I left the others to look after the 
ship, and I bolted below like a shot from a gun. She 
was on the floor in a faint right enough ; but she was 
beginning to come round when I reached her side; 
and we gave her some rum, and rubbed her hands, 
and poured water over her face. 

“ 'You ought to loosen her clothes/ I said to the old 
man. 

“ T don’t know how to/ he answered. But he 
took off her boots, which was something he did under- 
stand, and it seemed to have the desired effect, for 
she let out with one foot and kicked him in the mouth, 
and, to the best of my recollection, he swore. 

"She came round precious slowly, starting from 
the feet, as it were. First she’d twitch in one limb, 
and then she’d twitch in the other. Her father was 
carrying on like an idiot, crying and swearing at 
intervals, and calling me all the names he could lay 
his tongue to; for I had told him what I had said 
to Mollie, and it had made him pretty mad. What 
with the fright, and pouring out rum for Mollie, and 
drinking it by mistake himself, and absently repeat- 
ing the performance, he was getting excited. But I 
was too upset myself to take much notice of him, and 
I let him rave on, while I patted my girl’s hands, 
and loosened her collar, and begged her to forgive 
me for a clumsy brute — which was ridiculous, be- 
cause she couldn’t hear me. And when she did open 
her eyes she looked about her in a bewildered way 
as though she didn’t quite know where she was. 
Then her gaze met mine fully. I saw a flash of 
recollection come into her eyes, they grew wide with 
terror in an instant, and, as I’m a sinful man, I’m 
blest if she didn’t go clean off again.” 

"And no wonder,” commented Johnny. 


24 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


“What do you mean by that?” the other demanded 
fiercely. 

“Well, after a fright like that, I’m not surprised 
that she should,” returned Johnny innocently. 

The chief eyed him suspiciously for a moment, and 
then went on with his tale. 

“The old man began to rave when he saw her 
go off the second time. 

“ 'She’s dying,’ he yelled. 'And it’s your fault, you 
devil !’ 

“I got up and put the rum bottle out of his reach. 
Discipline is discipline, but there comes a time when 
you’ve got to make quite certain what discipline 
means. As I understood the term then, it included 
looking after the skipper’s interest, as well as other 
things. But he didn’t like it, and, as I found to my 
cost afterwards, he didn’t forgive it either. 

“ ‘She isn’t dying,’ I said, a trifle bitterly, for her 
going off like that at sight of me had made me a 
bit sore. 'She’s only jolly well scared, and when 
she comes round again you’ve got to attend to her, 
for I’m going to clear.’ 

“And I did too. As soon as I saw a flutter of her 
eyelid I was up that companion as though seven 
devils were behind me, and I took jolly good care to 
keep out of her sight all day. The next morning she 
stayed in her bunk, so I hadn’t a chance of asking 
her forgiveness for frightening her as I had done; 
and the old man was as surly as a bear with a sore 
head. He had a sore head literally, I believe, which 
accounted, of course, for his temper; and he was a 
bit worried about Mollie as well. She didn’t show 
up until the following day, and then she came into 
the cabin where I was, looking very white ” 

“What was the matter with you?” inquired Johnny 
sympathetically. 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 25 

“Don’t be a bally idiot. It was the girl who was 
looking white.” 

“Oh !” said the third. 

“ ‘Mollie !’ I said, going up to her. And it was 
lucky I reached her when I did, for I’m bothered 
if she didn’t tumble right into my arms.” 

“Must have been fond of you,” commented the 
third. 

Walford shook his head gloomily. 

“It wasn’t affection,” he said. “She had fainted 
dead away again.” 

“I think you were well out of it,” remarked 
Johnny consolingly. “That girl couldn’t have been 
healthy.” 

“She was as healthy as you,” the other retorted. 
“She was laughing and talking with her father ten 
minutes afterwards, and she ate as hearty a breakfast 
as any girl should; for I saw her through the sky- 
light, though I didn’t go down again.” 

“I should think not,” put in Heckraft, with the 
glimmer of a smile in his eyes. There was no an- 
swering smile in Walford’s; he looked preternat- 
urally grave. 

“She came on deck later,” he resumed, “and I could 
see she was purposely keeping out of my way, so I 
didn’t go near her either. But that night I wrote 
her a little note, explaining how sorry I was, and beg- 
ging for forgiveness. I gave the note to her father 
next morning and asked him to let her have it when 
she came in for breakfast. Then I went up on deck, 
hoping that by and bye she would come up and 
speak to me. But nothing of the kind. She took 
no more notice of that letter than if it had never 
been written.” 

“Are you quite sure she got it?” asked the third, 


26 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


who was beginning to get interested in spite of him- 
self. 

Walford took his pipe from his mouth and regard- 
ed the speaker in wondering silence for fully half a 
minute. Then he spoke. 

“My God! Johnny, you’ve got a head,” he said. “I 
never thought of that.” 

“Seeing the old man didn’t care particularly for 
the match,” pursued the man of marked intelligence, 
“I don’t think you displayed great foresight in mak- 
ing a pillar-box of him. You’d better have trusted 
one of the men.” 

“You’re right,” said the chief with conviction, and 
added gloomily, — “But it’s too late to regret a thing 
that took place eight years ago. He’s dead now, her 
father; and I don’t know where she is either — mar- 
ried, I expect, long ago. . . . 

“Well, all that day she kept out of my way, and 
the next. If I was in the cabin at meal times, she 
went out as soon as she caught sight of me there; 
so of course I kept away so as not to annoy her at 
all. . But one day, when the voyage was getting to- 
wards the finish, and I was feeling pretty low, and 
well-nigh desperate, I walked boldly up to her on 
deck, determined to have it out; but, as I’m a sin- 
ful man, if that girl didn’t turn pale at sight of me 
and fall flat on the deck in a dead faint.” 

“Pshaw!” ejaculated the third scornfully. “She 
was shamming.” 

Walford paused and looked at him in meditative 
silence. 

“I don’t know,” he answered at length very 
slowly. ... “I only wish I did.” 

“Seems to me,” said the third, “she was a spite- 
ful little minx, and wanted to pay you out.” 

“If you call her names, Johnny,” replied the chief 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 27 


very quietly, ‘Til hit you. And I should be sorry to 
be obliged to do that.” 

“When she went off like that I gave it up, though 
I had a long talk about it with her father first. It 
was shock, he explained. I had frightened her so 
badly that when she caught sight of me it acted on 
her nerves. She was bright and well enough other- 
wise. Well, of course, I assured him that I wouldn’t 
subject her to any fresh shocks; and I went for’ard 
for the rest of the time and messed with the men. 
And, if you’ll believe it, when we got ashore the 
old man paid me off and sacked me, and I’ve never 
set eyes on Mollie since. That’s what nerves did for 
me. . . . 

“I wasn’t long in getting a fresh appointment. I 
fancy the old man recommended me. But I was pretty 
sick over the business. And, somehow, whenever 
I’ve seen a nice girl since I’ve always had Mollie 
Heathcote’s face in front of hers, blotting the other 
out.” 

He straightened himself abruptly as he finished 
speaking, thrust the pipe, which had gone out, into 
his pocket, and without another word turned sud- 
denly away. Johnny looked after him as he walked 
along the deck, and his eyes were speculative when 
he turned them upon the passenger. 

“I reckon that girl had the let off of her life,” was 
his only comment. 

Heckraft, remembering the look on the face of the 
man as he spun his story, the man whom, despite his 
queer moods, he instinctively liked, made no response. 
He was not so sure that the girl had not missed her 
happiness in coquetting with life. 


Ill 


A SHIP during the process of coaling being about 
the most uncomfortable place possible, Heck- 
raft went ashore as soon as work was started, 
and mooned away the sunny hours as on the previous 
day under the trees in the garden of the Santa 
Catalina. A pretty little English girl staying at the 
hotel, with a pink and white complexion, and a seduc- 
tive mouth, swung in a hammock a few yards distant 
and flirted with him with her eyes. He amused him- 
self in like manner for a while, and was seriously 
contemplating decreasing the distance between them, 
when an elderly woman appeared in the pathway, 
and, to their mutual dissatisfaction, joined the girl of 
the hammock. The girl’s mutinous face expressed 
her vexation; the man, feeling bored, rose and saun- 
tered away; and the old lady, who was shortsighted, 
and whose unimaginative mind would never have con- 
ceived it possible that she could intrude on a tete-d- 
tete without words between complete strangers, sat 
down on the seat Heckraft had contemplated occupy- 
ing beneath the shade of the tree round which the 
head-rope which suspended the hammock was wound, 
and took out her knitting. 

“It is very pleasant here in the 0001,” she said com- 
placently. 

But the girl merely yawned and made no response. 
She had thought it pleasant herself until the old lady 
came in sight. It is extraordinary the subtle shades 
28 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 29 


of difference that may be introduced by an exchange 
of companionship. 

Heckraft, who had been warned as to the hour 
of the Ariadne's sailing, returned on board as the 
last lighter was discharging her few remaining bags 
of coal, and the sailors were getting the hose out pre- 
paratory to washing down decks. Coal dust lay thick 
on everything. The shoulders of the natives, stripped 
to the waist, were coated with it as with a garment; 
even the cabin, despite jealously closed ports, was 
gritty and uncomfortable, and the leather of the set- 
tees yielded a sticky black dust wherever one rested 
a hand. The steward was going about with a grimy, 
ineffectual duster, trying to remove the dirt; and 
Heckraft, reasoning that, since it was impossible to 
dodge the coal dust, it was preferable to get dirty 
in the open air than to remain in a closed and stuffy 
cabin, returned to the deck, and watched operations 
with the detached interest of an outsider. 

The chief officer, who was suffering from an at- 
tack of nerves, was swearing at the men. Heckraft 
saw him savagely kick a native, and rather expected 
a row; but the bronze giant, who had been carrying 
hundredweights of coal as easily as a white man 
would have shouldered a knapsack, only limped away, 
muttering, and scowled at his aggressor from a safe 
distance. Heckraft felt no sympathy for him. There 
was as little dignity in the dark man's servile man- 
ner of suffering the assault as there was in the vicious 
attack of the white man, knowing he had no 
retaliation to fear. It was a mean exhibition of 
cowardice on both sides. Heckraft was going out to 
work among coloured men. He wondered whether he 
would ever sink to the level of kicking his coolies. 
The mind of the dark races was as yet a closed book 
to him, but he had few illusions concerning it; and 


30 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 

the scene he had just witnessed did not tend to in- 
crease his respect. It had not needed that, any more 
than Walford’s assertion that it was impossible to 
make companions of niggers, to enforce his recog- 
nition of the gulf between white and black. Colour 
prejudice was no less strong in him than in most 
Europeans; but a sense of fairness adjusted the scale 
of his judgment, and inclined him to be tolerant of 
what he failed to understand. 

He watched the natives go over the side, and tum- 
ble into the lighter among the empty coal-bags; and 
then followed such a scouring of decks that he was 
forced to retreat to the cabin again; and when next 
he emerged everything was clean and orderly once 
more, and all wet and shiny as though there had been 
a heavy fall of rain. 

The rest of the voyage was pure enjoyment for 
Heckraft, a succession of warm summer days, and 
starlit summer nights; lazy days with nothing to do 
but watch the play of sunlight on blue water; and 
nights that were filled with magic, with the gentle 
music of the waves lapping against the vessel’s side, 
the soft stir of the breeze under the awning that was 
spread to keep the sun off the deck during the day- 
time, and the passionate strains of a violin, which 
Heckraft brought out of its case one evening and sur- 
prised and delighted an unlearned, but none the less 
critical, audience by playing with a master’s hand. 
Through his violin he overcame the chief engineer’s 
early prejudice against him, and by its means also 
successfully soothed Walford’s easily upset nerves. 

“He’s a fine fiddler,” the latter remarked on one 
occasion to the engineer, when Heckraft had retired 
to the cabin with his instrument under his arm. 

The chief engineer grunted. 

“I don’t know whether he’s much of a fiddler,” he 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 31 


responded ; and added with conviction : “But he’s 
a damned good scrape with the gut.” 

He rose and walked heavily down the deck, meet- 
ing the passenger as the latter emerged from the 
cabin, having shut his instrument away from the air. 
The encounter appeared accidental, which it was not, 
and Heckraft would have passed on, but the engineer 
stood in his path. 

“Funny that a bit of music should make a man 
think,” he said vaguely, — “think of things he wasn’t 
thinking of before.” 

Heckraft nodded sympathetically. There was noth- 
ing odd in the idea to him because he knew that 
music speaks to the soul. 

“It stirs a man,” the engineer proceeded awkward- 
ly, in the jerky manner of one who is feeling about 
after expression, “I’m married. I’ve got a little kid 
at ’ome, — a cripple. ... A crumpled rose-leaf, that’s 
what she is. . . . Your scraping put that idea into 
my head.” 

“It’s a pretty idea,” Heckraft said, “for the child 
to grow up with.” 

The engineer turned and walked beside him the 
length of the ill-lighted deck. 

“You don’t read poetry, I suppose?” he said. 

Heckraft admitted that he did. 

“There’s a poem that says something about music 
laying lightly on the soul. . . . Well, it’s a lie. Mu- 
sic lays heavy. It makes a man miserable. . . And 
the funny part is, it makes ’im glad to be miserable. 
I can’t understand it, but that’s ’ow it is.” 

“The emotions are as the strings of a violin,” 
Heckraft returned; “when touched they vibrate.” 

“Yes ; but there’s different ways of touching them,” 
the engineer insisted. 

“True! A sympathetic touch produces harmony; 


32 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


touch them roughly and you make discord. . . . And 
there’s more discord than harmony in life.” 

“I don’t know so much about that,” the other, who 
was inclined to be argumentative, contended. “If 
life was such a rotten show as many people try to 
make out, we shouldn’t be so loath to quit. We find 
fault with being ’ere, but we mostly want to stay.” 

Heckraft smiled at the optimist’s bald manner of 
uttering profound truths. He had, his gloomy phi- 
losophy notwithstanding, no particular desire to quit 
himself. And he was ready to admit that satisfac- 
tion may be derived from degrees of happiness. Life, 
if one continuous harmony, would lose its intensity 
of sweetness through want of contrast. 

“I’ve no quarrel with life,” he said. 

“Then don’t you go about making fool remarks,” 
the engineer admonished him; “there’s too much of 
that kind of thing in the world, as it is. . . . I’ll give 
you a bit of advice,” he added, after a moment’s 
reflection. “A man gave it to me once, and I 
acted on it, and never ’ad cause to regret it either — 
Marry.” 

“Marry !” Heckraft repeated ironically, — “On a 
salary and no prospects?” 

“Why not? ... A safer plan than marrying on 
prospects and no salary, like some do.” 

“I daresay. But ” 

“You’re going to tell me, I suppose, that you’ve 
been disappointed in love?” the engineer threw in 
jeeringly. 

Heckraft suddenly laughed. 

“I’ve never been in love in my life,” he asserted. 

His listener surveyed him doubtfully for a full 
minute in silence. 

“If that isn’t a lie,” he observed at length, with 
the incredulity of a man who has paid due homage 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 33 


to the sex, “there’s something wrong in your com- 
position, my son. . . 

The Ariadne steamed into Table Bay at midnight, 
and dropped anchor opposite the great rock which is 
the closed gate of Africa. Heckraft had waited up 
to have a look at the land that has been the Mecca 
of many a man’s ambition, and the despair of many 
others. It held out no alluring prospect for him; it 
offered simply a wider field for the worker than 
most places, and facilities for the non-professional 
which are not obtainable elsewhere. It is, as a mat- 
ter of fact, essentially a land for labour ; for the pro- 
fessional man as yet Africa provides small scope; 
it is the older civilisations that have need of the lat- 
ter. The need in the Colony can only be created 
when the labour market is sufficiently stocked; when 
the vast tracts of waste land are put under cultiva- 
tion, and existing industries further developed; when 
the plentiful and much needed water, which flows be- 
neath the sterile bosom of the great Karroo, is brought 
to the surface and used to irrigate the land which 
would yield a marvellous return were it not for the 
continuous struggle against protracted drought. 

The solution of many of the difficult problems of the 
South Africa of to-day would be found in the en- 
couragement of emigration. The Union does not en- 
courage emigration. Emigration would strengthen 
British influence in the Colony, for which reason alone 
it is highly desirable in a British Colony where Brit- 
ish influence is noticeably weak. South Africa’s need 
of emigration is more immediately urgent than Can- 
ada’s, though possibly less apparent to the undiscern- 
ing eye. The old country could spare some of her 
sons ; there is plenty of room in the new country for 
men who are not afraid of work, who have the 
steady courage to conscientiously make their way, and 


34 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


sufficient self-reliance to depend on their own energy 
and push to succeed. The old days of rapid fortune- 
making are numbered among the limbo of almost for- 
gotten things. 

It was a misty night on which the Ariadne dropped 
anchor in Table Bay in a convenient berth for dock- 
ing at daylight. The moon, not yet at its full, strug- 
gled bravely through the thin haze which partially 
obscured it, and threw over the calm surface of the 
sea a sheen of silvery light. Against the pale back- 
ground of the sky, in which the stars were veiled, 
the mountain stood out darkly in bold relief, impres- 
sive in its sombre grandeur, the long black line of its 
square summit ruled sharply against the purple bosom 
of the heavens that leaned towards it, while it held 
itself frowningly aloof, as it held itself aloof from, 
while seeming to guard, the city that nestled at its 
base. And below the mountain, like footlights in 
their brilliant regularity, stretched the lights of the 
harbour, lights which flung a pale reflection on the 
water beneath. 

Heckraft leaned upon the rail and looked at the 
wonderful approach to this land whose shores he had 
drifted towards on a wave of coincident adversity, an 
approach which is, perhaps, the most magnificently 
wonderful in the world; and the grandeur of it moved 
him inexpressibly. He had journeyed to this land 
reluctantly, with scant feeling of gratitude for the op- 
portunity it offered, with a mind warped with bitter- 
ness and discontent; and Africa, dark, silent, repres- 
sive, sent forth her welcome to him across the peace- 
ful moonlit waters of the bay, a welcome that 
breathed courage, and serene hope, and high en- 
deavour, as she stretched forth dark alluring arms 
and gathered this, her latest son, into the witching, 
languorous mystery of her embrace. 


IV 


A S he journeyed round the coast to the port of his 
destination, Heckraft experienced no longer the 
alien sensation of the stranger in an unknown 
land. This land which he meant to make his home 
was a part of the Empire, one of the fairest of her 
dominions. A man does not necessarily feel an exile 
because six thousand miles and more lie between him 
and the place of his birth; and since his eyes had 
beheld Africa, and his senses felt the magic of her 
silent welcome, the overmastering resentment which 
had filled him since the tide of misfortune had so un- 
expectedly overwhelmed him lost the keenness of its 
edge. After all, given health and strength and youth, 
the best part of his inheritance was his still. 

At Durban he was met by Johnson, the man whose 
estate in Drummond he was going to manage. John- 
son lived in Durban. He possessed timber works and 
other interests there, and was, Heckraft understood, 
immensely wealthy. His son was at the moment in 
Drummond, filling the temporary gap between the de- 
parture of the late manager and the arrival of his suc- 
cessor ; and, as the older man was eager, for reasons 
which he did not go into, to get him home, he speeded 
the new manager’s departure for the scene of his 
future labour with what Heckraft deemed inconsid- 
erate haste. 

“I’d ask you out to my place to lunch,” he said, 
“only you’ll be up there in ample time; and I wired 

35 


36 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


Harold this morning to expect you by this train. It 
is rather important that he should get back to town. 
I can ill spare him just now; his being away is a 
tremendous tax on me.” 

The supposition that Harold Johnson assisted his 
father generally in his many interests, was a proof of 
his genius in appearing to put in his time profitably, 
while filling it to his own satisfaction, after the man- 
ner of a young man who draws a handsome allow- 
ance and possesses an unbounded capacity for enjoy- 
ment. He was at the present time enjoying himself 
in Drummond. It suited him to be there; otherwise 
the vacancy would have been filled by someone else, 
as would unquestionably have been the case had 
Johnson, senior, been sooner in possession of the in- 
formation that had come to him indirectly within 
the last few days, information which, being an am- 
bitious man socially, and having ideas for the future 
of his only son, had considerably annoyed him. He 
was sufficiently shrewd to be aware that an attempt 
to frustrate youthful indiscretion not infrequently 
precipitates what one would avert; he therefore de- 
cided to ignore what he had heard, and to keep his 
son, as far as it was possible, from visiting Drum- 
mond in future. But Drummond was only a distance 
of thirty odd miles, and young Johnson drove his 
own motor, two facts which Johnson, senior, had 
omitted in his calculations. In any case, he could 
not have insisted on his son putting down his car. 

The train in which Heckraft made the tedious 
journey to Drummond passed through some of the 
fairest scenery he had ever beheld, as it laboured 
up the steep inclines, and rounded the sharp and sur- 
prisingly numerous curves of about the most uncom- 
fortable and difficult line in the country. The steep 
gradients and the sharpness of the curves astonished 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 3 7 

him; but as the train toiled laboriously upward, the 
feel of the air changed perceptibly; a soft light dry- 
ness was wafted in through the carriage windows, 
hot air, languid with the heat of the African summer, 
but altogether different in quality from the clammy, 
steamy heat of Durban. 

Heckraft leaned far out of the swaying carriage 
and watched the country as it swept by, green with 
its splendid tropical vegetation, and glowing with the 
gorgeous colouring of its flowers; his eye noted with 
appreciation the wonder of the atmosphere, the lights 
and shades, the hard brilliance of the sunshine, and 
the shadows that lay dense among the tangled under- 
growth that defied the fierce light of a golden sun 
shining in barbaric splendour in a sky of the deepest 
blue. And then, as the train passed Botha’s Hill and 
ran on towards Drummond, the hills broke upon his 
vision, countless hills rising and falling in vast undula- 
tions like giant waves struck into sudden immova- 
bility, hills that were softly green in the golden light, 
rolling on endlessly, though without monotony, away 
into illimitable distance. Some of the hills were cov- 
ered with wattles. There were wattle plantations on 
all sides. It occurred to Heckraft as he looked that 
he was something of an impostor. He was going to 
manage one of these plantations, and though he had 
made it his business to learn all he could about the 
industry, and had gone scientifically into the study 
of bark, he had very little practical experience. The 
extent of his ignorance, and his overwhelming impu- 
dence, struck him unpleasantly as the wattle planta- 
tions burst upon his vision with the wonder of the 
hills. 

The train ran into the little station. Heckraft was 
the only passenger to alight. There was no one on 
the platform to meet him, no one to take charge of 


38 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


his baggage, and no conveyance of any sort to be 
had. The station master, who was also signalman and 
local postmaster, suggested that he should leave his 
baggage and walk up the hill to the hotel. Since 
the walk was a matter of about three minutes, Heck- 
raft acted on the advice, and carrying a suit-case, 
crossed the line and climbed the steep, dusty ascent. 

He found on arrival at the hotel that he was ex- 
pected, though no preparation had been made. Young 
Johnson, who was staying at Inchanga, because the 
accommodation at Drummond did not suit him, had 
bespoken a room for him, but he had given no orders 
in regard to meeting the train, and the manager, as 
Heckraft soon discovered, belonged to the indolent 
class which seldom troubles to do more than is actu- 
ally demanded, seeming unable, or unwilling, to use 
any initiative in matters of no particular personal in- 
terest. The room allotted him was an outside room, 
apart from the main building altogether, one of sev- 
eral that had been run up hurriedly with due regard 
for economy, being built of corrugated iron lined with 
varnished planks. It gave Heckraft the sensation of 
being confined in a box, — a very hot box, for the 
building, which was exposed to the full glare of the 
sun, absorbed the heat and retained it, so that during 
the daytime it was uninhabitable, and not much bet- 
ter at night. If a cold wind sprung up during the 
night, or the rain fell, the temperature of the rooms 
dropped so suddenly as to make them positively un- 
healthy. In the colonies, Heckraft was aware that 
a man expects to rough it; but it was a revelation 
to him that such primitive surroundings should be 
found so near to a large town. 

He went in to lunch. The bill of fare was meagre 
and ill chosen for the climate and the time of year. 
Pork was the only meat. He remembered the engi- 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 39 

neer’s rebuke on board the Ariadne , and swallowed 
the unwholesome fare with the philosophic cheerful- 
ness acquired on the voyage. As there was no water 
supply, other than rain water preserved in large 
tanks, which in a country of incessant drought is not 
particularly healthy drinking, he ordered whisky and 
soda, and wondered whether he would be ruined first 
in his pocket or his constitution by a beverage which 
cost seven and six a bottle, and which taken at all 
hours during the day inclines even a temperate man 
to become a drunkard. If Inchanga offered some- 
thing better than this he was not surprised that young 
Johnson should go there. 

He was smoking a cigarette on the roughly made 
stoep outside his bedroom when Johnson put in an ap- 
pearance. He apologised in an off-hand manner for 
not meeting the train. He had as a matter of fact 
forgotten that Heckraft was coming; as soon as he 
remembered he had sprinted over in the car. 

“So they’ve put you into Tintown?” he said, glanc- 
ing disparagingly at the iron shanty. . . . “Full up in 
the hotel, I suppose. The place is rottenly managed.” 

Heckraft, quietly surveying the speaker, did not 
feel disposed to dispute this. He was of the same 
opinion. Harold Johnson took out a cigarette case 
and started to smoke. He was a man of about twenty- 
five, though he looked older, a handsome, fair man, 
inclined to stoutness, with big, blue, trusting-looking 
eyes, and very red, full lips. There was something 
in the face which Heckraft liked, and again some- 
thing which instinctively repelled him. Johnson be- 
longed to a type that women find more attractive than 
men. But Heckraft, wishful to be on good terms with 
his employer’s son, determined to start without pre- 
judice; though it was plain that the young man con- 
sidered him entirely unworthy of special notice. He 


4 o VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


had looked him up simply in his capacity of employer ; 
in this capacity also he took him over the plantation, 
and introduced him to Gommet, the engineer, the 
only other white man employed on the place. It was 
evident to Heckraft that Johnson held Gommet in 
contempt, though the latter, besides being a much 
older man, was his superior intellectually. He was 
too clever a man to be engineer on a wattle planta- 
tion; but there was a reason for that, which Heck- 
raft learned later, a reason which explained, while 
it did not excuse, Johnson’s supercilious treatment 
of one who, in equal circumstances, could have left 
him far behind in the race. The thing which struck 
Heckraft most, and won his admiration, was the air 
of sublime and unconscious indifference in which 
Gommet regarded the other, as a man of greater parts 
might regard one whose lesser intelligence claimed his 
special indulgence. He had no time to waste on such 
men as Harold Johnson, and his manner conveyed as 
much. The younger man was clearly at a disadvan- 
tage and the consciousness of this inclined him to be 
spiteful. 

“Gommet’s a rotter,” he explained to Heckraft 
later. . . . “Drinks like a fish. He’s married too. . . . 
Got a decent little wife, living at Maritzburg, I be- 
lieve. She left him — couldn’t stand it. . . . no woman 
could. I don’t believe he cares a tinker’s curse 
either. . . . Keeps an Indian woman at his house, 
and drinks himself blind every night. He’s a good 
man though, and cheap, or we shouldn’t keep him on. 
But he manages to get through his work all right.” 

Heckraft made no answer; but he liked Harold 
Johnson less after that unnecessary confidence. The 
knowledge that another has a failing does not consti- 
tute a reason for publishing the fact. 

They had left the works, and now followed a path 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 41 


through the hotel grounds which was a short cut to 
the station and to the woods. At a particular point 
in the path Heckraft halted and stood still to admire 
the view through a clearing in the trees. It was an- 
other and more comprehensive view of the wonderful 
winding valley and broken ranges of hills which he 
had first seen from the train. In the pale light of 
evening, with the early mists gathering thickly and 
veiling the scene, it was strangely, even disturbingly, 
beautiful. Hills stretched away on all sides until 
they faded into the mists and became mere shadow 
shapes, wan phantom forms, obscured by the gather- 
ing fog, yet standing forth grey and vaguely out- 
lined, majestic sentinels of nature guarding the valley 
of the everlasting hills. And in the foreground more 
and yet more hills, each long, undulating line show- 
ing sharper and more distinct, until the velvety slopes 
and soft, rounded summits revealed separate shades 
of colour, of light greens and browns and saffrons 
mingling with the darker green of the wattles that 
lined their slopes. 

“What a view !” said Heckraft. 

The other man surveyed it with accustomed, un- 
appreciative eyes. 

“Not half bad/’ he replied; and added after a si- 
lence : “They call that the Valley of a Thousand Hills. 
I should think the chap who started out to count them 
must have got tired of the job.” 

“He certainly did not exaggerate,” said Heckraft, 
as he stared across the valley into the grey mist. 


V 


N otwithstanding the necessity for his 

urgent return to town, young Johnson lin- 
gered on at Inchanga for a week after Heck- 
raft’s arrival. During that week the plantation saw 
him on an average for a couple of hours a day. He 
motored over usually after breakfast, and spent part 
of the morning riding through the forests with the 
manager, supervising the work. Heckraft found his 
assistance after the first day wholly unnecessary. The 
Coolies who worked on the plantation had been there 
a long time, and knew more about timber, and the 
method of stripping bark than the white men; and 
Heckraft, whenever he was at a loss, found that 
Gommet could give him all the information he re- 
quired. 

Gommet had worked on the plantation for several 
years. He had had an idea once of himself acquir- 
ing land and going in for wattle planting. The idea 
had grown more vague of late, though it was not en- 
tirely abandoned ; but there was less incentive now to 
become an owner. Where was the use in making a 
start when life offered nothing further than the im- 
proving of a man’s condition, and the addition of a 
few personal comforts? . . . The savour of things 
was gone. But he managed to imbue Heckraft with 
his ambition, and some of his old enthusiasm kindled 
anew, called back to life at sight of the gleam of in- 
terest, the purposeful look in the younger man’s eyes. 
“Got any capital?” he asked Heckraft one day. 

42 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 43 


The latter nodded. 

“We could do it together,” he said. “I’ve got the 
refusal of a farm between this and Inchanga. . . . 
two thousand acres. We’d have to put it under wat- 
tle, of course. The trees take six years maturing. 
. . . Being in the fog belt, it suits them, and they go 
ahead fine.” 

“I’ll have to think about it,” Heckraft returned. 

“Of course. ... You mightn’t care about the life 
particularly. I do, you see. But there isn’t exactly 
a fortune in it. Our bark only fetches six pounds a 
ton; a few years back we made twelve easy. . . . 
But it’s not much of an existence for a man of your 
years — might almost as well be buried, eh?” 

“There doesn’t appear to be much excitement of- 
fering,” Heckraft admitted. — “Though some people 
seem to find the place attractive.” 

“You mean Johnson. . . . He’s got a girl. Her 
people are farming a few miles from here. She’s 
taken with his motor car, I imagine.” 

“Oh ! he’s well enough to look at in his way to be 
appreciated for himself.” 

“Not by her people, though. They’re warm folk, — 
the typical, old-fashioned Boers who live by the land 
and love it. They don’t speak English. The girl had 
quite a fight to get away to the town and learn the 
language. Her parents considered the Taal good 
enough for themselves, and therefore good enough for 
their children ; but Alieta has ideas of her own.” 

“But a Dutch girl!” Heckraft said, and his tone 
betrayed all the prejudice of the insular Britisher. 

Gommet smiled drily. 

“You wait until you have seen Alieta,” he said; 
“and I think you’ll agree with me that she’s too good 
to throw herself away on a puppy, even though the 
puppy happen to be the son of a millionaire.” 


44 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 

Heckraft saw Alieta later in the afternoon. He 
was walking his horse along the road towards the 
sheds when Johnson overtook him in his car, and 
slowing down, stopped, and waited for him to come 
up. He was rather proud of showing off his car, 
which was a new purchase; he was still more proud 
of showing off the beauty of the girl who sat in the* 
front seat at his side, taking pleasure in watching 
the admiration her beauty evoked. He introduced her 
to Heckraft, when the latter rode up, with difficulty 
forcing his horse, which was restive, to approach 
the car, and watched the manager narrowly, curious 
to note the effect of the girl’s loveliness on him, as 
a connoisseur might be over an object of art which 
he jealously exhibits to another. But the manager 
did not gratify him. Whatever of admiration he felt 
— and he was not more blind to feminine charms 
than another man — did not reveal itself in his look. 
His gaze, as it rested upon the joyous young face, ex- 
pressed more of interested curiosity than any other 
emotion, though there was pleasure in his eyes too, 
the pleasure of one who looks upon something whole- 
some and sweet. 

Alieta’s was the most attractive form of beauty 
it is possible to meet, and, so far from represent- 
ing any particular type, one carried away after 
a first acquaintance a very vivid impression of 
frank and lovely girlhood, and only a hazy idea as 
to the quality of her colouring. She was in reality 
neither fair nor dark. She possessed a pair of warm, 
brown, friendly eyes, large eyes that looked out upon 
life with a happy and fearless confidence ; and a warm 
brown skin, tinted from exposure to the sun she 
loved. Her hair too was brown at the roots. It was 
beautiful hair, of varying shades of colour, the ends 
paling and brightening to golden, so that the little 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 45 


curls that escaped from under the small, closely-fit- 
ting hat gave a first impression of the owner being a 
blonde, an impression which never quite faded, de- 
spite the dark eyes, and the pale olive tint in the 
skin. A rich colour, uncommon in women bred in 
hot climates, glowed in her cheeks, and the pretty 
lips were red as the scarlet geraniums she wore at 
her breast. 

She leant forward and smiled at Heckraft across 
her lover, observing with appreciation the strong 
hand on the rein controlling the fidgety horse. Heck- 
raft noticed the fascinating dimple that appeared at 
the corner of her mouth when she smiled, noticed too 
that the neck supporting the small head was very 
long and swan-like; and he judged her to be 
taller than the average. He also saw that she 
was slender almost to a fault, and wondered why 
he had always imagined that Dutchwomen were 
stout. 

“You must be fond of solitude to come all the 
way from England to a place like this,” she said. 

“We haven’t anything half so fine as this in Eng- 
land,” he replied. 

The dimple came into play again. 

“But it’s dull,” she insisted. “There isn’t much 
life.” 

“There are the hills — and other compensations.” 

“You’ll find the hills unsatisfactory companions 
when you want to converse,” Alieta argued. 

“Then,” he answered, observing her intently, “I 
shall have recourse to the other compensations.” 

She looked at him with a slightly puzzled smile 
that was also faintly amused. 

“I wish you’d teach me to recognise them,” she 
said. “I am frequently in need of compensations 
myself.” 


46 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


But Johnson, who did not altogether approve of the 
turn the conversation had taken, here intervened. 

“You don’t need to bother about that,” he re- 
marked, resting his large hand heavily on her knee. 
“You’ll be shaking the dust of the place off your 
shoes before long.” 

But Alieta only laughed in a provokingly uncon- 
vinced way. She liked to dwell on the idea, as chil- 
dren like to play at make-believe; but it always ap- 
peared to her very indefinite that time of which Har- 
old spoke with such certainty on occasions, and at 
other times with the sullen manner of a boy helping 
himself to something which he feels if he asked per- 
mission would be denied. He had every intention 
of marrying Alieta, and if opposition threatened, of 
marrying her secretly. But to Alieta, who was young, 
and only in love with the idea of being loved, mar- 
riage was the indeterminate result of a long and 
pleasant courtship; and the courtship was of very 
recent date. 

“It wouldn’t be so dull if you came more often,” 
she said, with a little display of affection which Heck- 
raft thought very pretty. “But when you are away, 
what is there to amuse me? . . . only the hills. I 
haven’t Mr. Heckraft’s power; the hills don’t speak 
to me. And they don’t companion my walks.” 

“And yet they accompany you,” Heckraft said. 

“They’re always there — yes.” She looked at him 
fixedly with deepening interest, and added with an air 
of puzzled conviction: “You won’t find Drummond 
dull. You’ll be like Mr. Gommet, satisfied to stay 
here all your days. It’s rather nice of you. People 
who come to these parts are usually so keen to get 
away.” 

“Give him a chance. ... He hasn’t been here 
a week,” Johnson interposed. “As for Gommet, he 


VALLEY OE A THOUSAND HILLS 47 

has his own method of drowning the solitudes. I 
don’t suppose it troubles him what corner of the 
earth he inhabits provided he can get his 'cure’.” 

He laughed contemptuously. Alieta, her senses 
jarred by the bad taste of the remark, looked at him 
gravely, a tiny pucker between the level, finely pen- 
cilled brows, a thin line that was scarcely a frown, 
and which lost itself beneath the gold curls that 
waved low over her temples. 

“I like Mr. Gommet,” she said quietly, and knew 
not how greatly in saying so she roused the esteem 
and admiration of one of her listeners. The simple 
little sentence, conveying in its seriousness a veiled 
rebuke, won Heckraft’s immediate regard. He ranked 
loyalty in man or woman among the highest virtues, 
and he judged, not only from Alieta’s remark, but 
from the manner of her utterance, that she would 
be loyal in her friendships. Johnson received the 
little speech in an altogether different spirit. 

"You don’t know as much about him as I do, you 
see,” he said curtly. "And I object to your knowing 
him at all. He is no companion for you.” 

Alieta forbore to argue before a third person. She 
put up a shapely, ungloved hand and stroked his coat, 
as a woman smooths an animal, rubbing its fur the 
right way in semi-serious mood. 

"Silly!” she said. "As though I am not perfectly 
aware that Mr. Gommet is far too clever a person 
to wish to make a companion of me. It is only 
big boys, like you, that I can hope to amuse. And I 
can’t keep even you in a good temper.” 

Johnson laughed, despite his annoyance; there was 
an irresistible seductiveness in Alieta’s caressing tones, 
and, having made a display of authority, he allowed 
himself to be propitiated. His objection to Gommet 
was founded on dislike, jealousy did not enter into 


48 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


the matter; he was too self-complacent to become an 
easy prey to jealousy, but he would make a bad enemy 
of the man who aroused the passion in him. 

Heckraft watched the by-play while seeming to be 
fully occupied in controlling his restive mount, which 
objected to the throbbing of the engine that Johnson 
had not felt it worth his while to stop, and watching, 
bethought himself of a remark of Gommet’s to the 
effect that the Dutch girl was too good to throw her- 
self away on a puppy. But he did not attribute her 
choice to mercenary reasons. She was probably seek- 
ing escape from the solitudes of which she complained, 
and Johnson had opened a door which revealed a 
fairly attractive vista. It was scarcely surprising that 
Alieta should stand with reluctant feet on the thresh- 
old, viewing the prospect with eager, inquisitive gaze. 
One day she might step across the threshold, and 
quite possibly never look back with regret. There 
are a good many puppies in the world, and some of 
them make quite reputable husbands. 

He brought his horse up beside the car. Johnson 
was preparing to drive on, and Alieta was addressing 
a remark to him across the latter’s substantial per- 
son. 

“You must come and see the farm,” she said. “It’s 
a short ride, or a long walk, from here. . . . Odsani, 
close to Inchanga. My father and mother will be 
pleased to see you, but unless you talk Dutch I shall 
have to interpret.” 

“If Dutch presents no very formidable difficulty 
I will attempt to acquire the language,” he said. “In 
any case, since you give me permission, I will visit 
Odsani very shortly.” 

Alieta smiled at him. 

“Ik zal jou verwacht,” she said. 

And Heckraft, having no answer to a remark 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 49 


which signified that the speaker would expect him, 
raised his hat as the car proceeded on its way, leav- 
ing him in a cloud of dust, careering about the road 
on a prancing horse that was more spirited than its 
appearance warranted. 

“He rides well,” Alieta observed to her companion, 
looking behind her through the dust-cloud at the 
rearing animal and its rider. “I believed it was only 
a Dutchman who could manage a horse like that.” 

“Dutchmen can’t ride for nuts,” Johnson answered 
rudely. But Alieta remained unmoved. 

“They are the men who understand the breeding 
and management of horses in this country better than 
anyone else,” she asserted. “I can’t allow you to 
deny my men the credit due to them.” 

He smiled at her lazily. 

“What a pertinacious meisje it is,” he said. 

Heckraft dismounted at the stables and walked 
across to the works. Gommet was still busy direct- 
ing the operation of loading and discharging sacks 
of the bark that had been cut up that day. Heckraft 
seated himself on a stack of timber, and watched the 
bark sliding down the shafts into the open necks of 
the sacks, to be pressed down by automatic stampers 
set in motion by the attendant Coolie. It was all so 
beautifully simple, and, as Gommet was fond of ex- 
plaining, not so very expensive either as machinery 
went. 

“I’ve just met Miss Van der Vyver,” he said, tap- 
ping his gaitered leg idly with the riding whip he 
carried. 

Gommet looked round. 

“I heard them pass,” he returned. “That fellow 
drives like Jehu, the son of Nimshi. . . . Well, what 
did you think of her? — Pretty, eh?” 

“The term is inadequate,” Heckraft answered. “But 


50 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 

apart from her appearance, she is quite remarkable, — 
a girl with tact, and great personal charm.” 

“I told you she was too good for Johnson. If 
she had the opportunity of meeting men she wouldn’t 
marry a puppy.” 

He took some cotton waste from his pocket and 
mopped the perspiration from his brow. 

“Didn’t strike you that she was in love with him, 
I suppose? She’s tired of the sight of hills and wat- 
tles, I take it, and finds the other thing a sort of out- 
let. But there’s only one valid excuse for marriage 
. . . . every other reason ends in disappointment.” 

Heckraft was surprised. He had not been pre- 
pared for a discourse on love and marriage from 
Gommet. Then he remembered what he had heard 
of Gommet’s own unfortunate experience, and his 
sympathy went out to this man, who, save in a vague, 
indirect manner, which conveyed the impression that 
he thought about the thing, never referred to his pri- 
vate affairs. So far as he was concerned that part of 
his life was the end of a volume which was closed 
and put back on the shelf. But the contents of the 
volume were ever present in his mind. 

“She’s for trying her wings,” he added, having 
further recourse to the cotton waste. “Tragedy often 
follows when the young birds leave the nest.” 


VI 


T HE Van der Vyvers’ farm, Odsani, was sep- 
arated from the wattle plantation only by the 
barbed wire fencing which marked its boun- 
dary. It is easy enough to converse across barbed 
wire, if not so simple to surmount this efficacious 
barrier, as Heckraft proved quite early in his ac- 
quaintance with Alieta Van der Vyver. 

He discovered the boundary fence by accident while 
riding round to inspect the fire-breaks skirting the 
plantation. That it was the fencing of Odsani he 
knew, even before he saw Alieta, mounted on a big 
bay horse, coming towards him on the other side 
of the fence. Alieta had drawn rein on that occasion 
and greeted him with unmistakable pleasure. And 
after that day it seemed to him quite natural that he 
should ride regularly in the same direction at much 
about the same hour. At first he met her only oc- 
casionally, but after a while these encounters were 
more frequent, and owed less and less to chance, until 
it became the recognised thing for them to make 
for a given place and await each other’s coming. 

“You are so methodical,” Alieta said to him once; 
“I could set my watch by you.” 

“I would sooner miss my meals than miss this 
pleasant break in the day,” he replied. 

Her smiling face betrayed her pleasure. 

“I am letting you into the secret of where I find 
my compensations,” he added, laughing. 

5i 


52 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 

“You are helping me in a measure to discover a 
few for myself. Through you I am learning to ap- 
preciate the hills.” 

“Yes !” he said, and looked pleased. “Some even- 
ing, if you will ride with me, I will interpret their 
language for you, as you interpret between Mrs. 
Van der Vyver and me. When you understand them 
you will enjoy their company.” 

“With you as interpreter, yes,” she conceded. 

And neither the girl nor the man was aware that 
they were on the fringe of a deeper regard than that 
of mere friendship. They drifted into it unconscious- 
ly, taking pleasure in one another’s society, — two 
lonely human beings, full of the joy of life and a 
great love of humanity. The man was ten years 
older than the girl; compared with her youth he ap- 
peared staid and middle-aged, a safe and agreeable 
companion, one to make a friend of ; and with the 
substantial figure of Harold Johnson looming in the 
foreground of their minds, the idea of falling in love 
did not occur to either ; only occasionally Alieta found 
herself comparing this new friend with her lover, and 
invariably it was Johnson who suffered by the com- 
parison. In this there was no intentional disloyalty; 
but Alieta was apt to be critical in respect of those she 
loved. Love was not blind in her case, it possessed 
exceptionally clear vision, and its demands were in- 
clined to be exacting. 

It was Mrs. Van der Vyver who was the first to 
awake to the fact that the manager came rather 
often to Odsani, and, since he could not converse 
either with herself or her husband, the inference was 
that he came to see Alieta. Mrs. Van der Vyver was 
too thoroughly Dutch at heart to be in favour of an 
English husband for her daughter ; but she had over- 
come her prejudices to some extent in the case of Har- 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 53 


old Johnson on account of his worldly possessions; 
much gold, and plenty good morgen, give a man a 
right to consideration. If Alieta were determined to 
marry the rich man’s son there was no very great 
reason against it, but there were very grave objec- 
tions to a marriage with the rich man’s manager. 
Mrs. Van der Vyver had no use for a son-in-law who 
came wooing with empty hands. 

She gave Alieta no verbal warning, but one even- 
ing she showed her disapproval after the time-hon- 
oured custom of her people. She brought in the can- 
dle. The performance of this rite lost in effect since 
it conveyed nothing to the mind of Heckraft, who 
had not been long enough in the country to be aware 
that a guest was expected to take his leave when the 
candle was burnt out, or that he might gauge the ex- 
tent of his welcome by the length of candle pro- 
vided. In this instance Mrs. Van der Vyver allowed 
only two inches. That would prove to the unwelcome 
suitor the strength of her disapproval. At the same 
time that she brought the candle in and set it upon 
the table, she removed two longer lengths from the 
piano and bore them away with her. Heckraft 
merely concluded that the supply was running short. 

“I am going to bed,” she said, looking at Alieta 
severely from the doorway. “If we all turned night 
into day there would be no work done.” 

Alieta translated this for Heckraft’s benefit, giving 
the gist of the remark shorn of its insinuation. Mrs. 
Van der Vyver listened to her daughter’s glib English 
with a frown. It was unwise to give to the children 
an education superior to their parents, she often af- 
firmed; it put one at a disadvantage. If she could 
have her day over again she would not repeat that 
mistake. 

Heckraft wished the old lady good-night, using 


54 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


one of the phrases Alieta had taught him. It had 
ceased to be a matter of surprise to him that the 
host and hostess should retire to their room and leave 
him to be entertained by the daughter of the house; 
under no consideration would the old couple have re- 
mained out of bed after nine o’clock. The night was 
given them for rest so that they could more profit- 
ably employ the day. The man or woman who kept 
late hours was no better than an idler. 

When her mother had left the room, Alieta rose 
and extinguished the sorry illumination of the soli- 
tary candle. She perfectly understood its import ; and 
though she deplored the conservatism of her moth- 
er’s principles, she also respected it. Her parents 
were descendants of the old Dutch settlers, and they 
were very little further advanced than their primitive 
forbears. How this, their youngest and only unmar- 
ried child, had sprung from the branch of so deeply 
rooted a tree was difficult to understand; it seemed 
as though she must be a graft. 

“It is much nicer to sit in the moonlight,” Alieta 
said, as she deftly snufifed the smoking wick between 
her fingers, and then came back to the window. “And 
a light only attracts the mosquitoes.” 

“That amount of light,” Heckraft answered in his 
sublime ignorance, “wouldn’t attract anything. But 
you’re right; the night is superb. Let us sit out on 
the stoep.” 

They stepped over the sill, and stood in the moon- 
light, looking across the garden to the distant hills, 
shrouded in a cloud-like mist that resembled drifts 
of snow in the white light, snow which, reversing the 
natural order, lay heavy in the valleys and only 
sparsely covered the heights. 

Alieta leaned against one of the clumsy stanchions 
which supported the verandah shade, her small head 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 55 


thrown back, showing the long slender column of her 
throat. Heckraft stood beside her, not looking at 
her. They were both intent on the beauty of the scene 
that stretched before their gaze, and neither of them 
consciously alive to the fact of how greatly the pres- 
ence of the other assisted their powers of apprecia- 
tion. It was a warm, windless night. The fireflies 
were flitting in and out among the trees, and the air 
was fragrant with the scent of the wattle flower, the 
creamy, feathery blossoms which have a sweet, and 
yet somewhat acrid, scent when in full flower, as 
the trees were at that season. 

Alieta drew in long whiffs of it in silent content, 
and Heckraft turned from the contemplation of the 
hills, and saw her leaning there in graceful uncon- 
scious pose, the tall, slender young body supported by 
the clumsy woodwork at her back, the moonlight 
striking full on the upturned, earnest face; and in 
that moment, as though a searchlight had been flashed 
into the inner recesses of his consciousness, it was 
revealed to him beyond question that he had in this 
out of the way corner of the world met the one woman 
who could interest him above all others, the only 
woman, he felt, who was destined to be an influence 
in his life. Adversity had led him to her, and Na- 
ture, who recognises no obstacles where hearts beat 
in perfect accord, was working her will with them for 
the furtherance of her own ends. Abruptly he awoke 
out of his dreaming to the reality of things, to the 
certainty that if not checked, this growing intimacy 
would create for both an intolerable situation. He 
caught the flash of diamonds in the moonlight when 
she moved her hand, diamonds which another man 
had placed upon her finger. The sight of the gems 
angered him. By what human right had this unap- 
preciative, so much younger man stepped in and fore- 


56 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


stalled him with the only woman he had ever cared 
for? 

“You are very silent,” Alieta said suddenly. “Why 
do you look at me so?” 

The obvious reply to that question hovered on his 
lips but did not pass them. Instead he said : 

“After all, it is a lonely life, this.” 

Which remark was the outcome of reflections in- 
duced by the sight of the ring upon her finger, the 
symbol of an escape from the solitudes of the ever- 
lasting hills. Alieta gazed at him thoughtfully. 

“So you are finding that out?” she said. 

“I was thinking of you,” he answered, with his 
customary directness. “It is too much to imagine 
that you could settle for ever in the Valley of a Thou- 
sand Hills.” 

He smiled at her as he spoke, and passed his hand 
over his hair, as was a habit with him when perplexed 
or otherwise moved. Alieta drew herself more erect. 

“I like the way in which you think and speak of 
the hills,” she said irrelevantly. “You are teaching 
me to love them. Whenever I look at them now I see 
them with your eyes. The other morning when I 
was riding before breakfast and came upon the valley 
unexpectedly round the bend of the road, the beauty 
of it stirred me so profoundly that I wanted to weep. 
The sun was just flushing the sky, and the white 
clouds were pouring over the hillsides in foaming cas- 
cades. I’ve seen it like that often. I’ve admired it, of 
course, but it never stirred me out of myself before 
you opened my eyes. You have taught me to realise 
the privilege of living among beautiful surroundings.” 

“One needs human companionship, too,” he urged, 
in a half-hearted attempt to damp her ardour. 

“Yes, I suppose so.” Alieta laughed softly. “Since 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 5 7 

Fve learnt to love the hills/' she said, “I haven’t felt 
lonely any more.” 

The frank ingenuousness of this admission left him 
with nothing to say, but it became vitally clear and 
important to him that this pleasant intimacy must 
terminate if a man intended playing the game of life 
as honour intended it to be played. He held the ordi- 
nary code in regard to such matters: the theory that 
all is fair in love and war occurred to him as a con- 
venient and sorry cloak beneath which to conceal the 
treachery it sought to excuse. To pursue the friend- 
ship further, he would need to lower his standard, for 
already he perceived that they had reached the point 
where friendship assimilates those deeper emotions 
which sex in obedience to natural laws promotes. It 
would not be fair to either to let the thing go on and 
simply drift. And he had a rooted antipathy to drift- 
ing. He had acted helmsman in his own life hitherto; 
he had no intention now of relinquishing his grasp 
because his craft was sailing in troubled waters. The 
more difficult the steering the more need to stand 
steady with hand upon the tiller, braced for any emer- 
gency. But he realised even while he made his de- 
cision that a fresh and greater loss than anything he 
had yet experienced was his; and the knowledge left 
him with a sense of strong resentment, and a bitter 
feeling towards Johnson which he knew to be unjust. 
It was absurd to hate a man because he chanced to 
be before one in the field, — as reasonably dislike the 
man who touches the tape first in a race. The thing 
struck him as mean. 

And then Alieta’s voice broke in upon his musing, 
soothing and sweet and low pitched, with the new 
caressing quality in its tones which always crept into 
them now when they were alone together. 

“I have felt lately that if I went away — if I left 


58 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


the hills, I should have to come back. There’s a bit 
of myself buried here. ... I suppose it’s because I 
was born here. My feet are rooted in the soil.” 

“Young trees bear transplanting,” he answered 
quietly. 

“You think so? . . . You think that I’ll be able 
to turn my back on — this? I’m inclined to rebel at 
my lot as a woman. Why should the woman always 
have to tear herself up by the roots to follow the 
man ?” 

“It’s the law of life,” he replied. 

“Life as we have made it.” 

“No. Look at the wild things. . . . Take the finks, 
for instance; you have plenty of opportunity of ob- 
serving their habits. The male bird builds the nest 
and takes his mate to it.” 

Alieta laughed. 

“And if she doesn’t approve of the home he has 
built for her, she has been known to pull it to pieces.” 

“That’s a precedent that many a woman has fol- 
lowed,” he said. 

“Yes; I’m like that,” Alieta responded. “Consid- 
ering all that a woman has to renounce she is justi- 
fied in being exacting. And when she destroys the 
home, though she is usually held in blame, the fault, 
if one could look into the inner lives of others im- 
partially, would be found not infrequently to lie with 
the founder of the home. For woman is a homy per- 
son, and not by nature destructive.” 

“You are very loyal to your sex,” he said, with 
a note of approval in his voice. 

“Yes. I like my own sex. But I wish to be fair. 

. . . There is a broken home not so very far away; 
and I can’t determine whether the woman was justi- 
fied there. The provocation was great, — it must have 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 59 


been. But it’s rather selfish to throw off one’s re- 
sponsibilities because the collar galls.” 

“You see,” he said, smiling, “you are not alto- 
gether consistent. You don’t really approve of the 
destructive finks.” 

“That’s not quite fair; you are twisting my mean- 
ing,” Alieta objected. “When the reason is sufficient, 
when it makes for the greater good, then I say the 
woman is justified; but when it is merely a selfish 
evasion of unpleasantness, then she is cowardly and 
altogether in the wrong. We can’t live only for our- 
selves.” 

“No,” he answered, feeling that her argument fitted 
his own case. “Life would be much more simple if 
we could.” 

“I wonder!” Alieta mused, and stretched her long 
arms gracefully above her head, bringing them down 
slowly, with the hands clasped, until they rested upon 
her hair. “It seems to me that it would make life 
rather more complex.” 

“After all, you’re right,” he said, looking at her 
quickly. “If each individual went his own way it 
would do away with all combination, and combination 
forms the basis of successful achievement whether of 
statesmanship or domestic affairs. . . .” 

When later he left her, he puzzled that she, a girl, 
should so often lead his thoughts towards abstruse 
subjects, and not infrequently dominate and direct 
his judgment in regard to matters he would scarcely 
have thought her qualified to form opinions on. 
Alieta was one of the few women he had been brought 
into contact with who had trained her reasoning 
faculties. He recognised that it was this quality in 
her that made her so companionable. 


VII 


A LIGHT in Gommet’s window when Heckraft 
rode back that evening, after leaving Alieta 
somewhat earlier than was his custom when 
visiting Odsani, prompted him to dismount and go 
within. Gommet was smoking in the sitting-room, 
Sutton’s book on the wattle industry open on the 
table before him, together with a memorandum book 
in which he was making copious notes. The sight of 
the book, of the man’s quiet absorption in his occu- 
pation, set Heckraft’s mind working in a new direc- 
tion. Quite suddenly, and without any conscious 
effort at decision, he knew that a determination was 
arrived at, that his mind was firmly fixed in its pur- 
pose to fall in with the other man’s ideas, and what- 
ever the risk, however remote the prospect of fortune, 
to put his whole interest in the soil, — to become an 
owner, a permanent resident among the hills. 

“Hallo !” said Gommet, looking up. “I hoped you’d 
give me a hail to-night. I heard you ride past an 
hour or so back.” 

He was perfectly aware of where the other had 
been. He had been quietly observant of Heckraft’s 
movements for some time, and, being a man more 
ready of thought than of speech, he had come to a 
quite natural, and not altogether incorrect, deduction 
on the matter of the manager’s preference for Alieta 
Van der Vyver’s society. 

Heckraft took a chair and sat forward, with his 
arms folded on the table. 

60 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 61 


“Working out figures, eh?” he said. 

The engineer put down the stump of pencil he had 
been working with, and nodded briefly. 

‘Tm always at it,” he admitted with a faint smile. 
“It’s become an obsession with me. . . . And yet 
Fm not so keen on the project but that at times I 
feel that it’s not worth while. If it wasn’t that I ob- 
ject so strongly to being a paid man, I shouldn’t nurse 
the idea as I do. You see, a salaried man with my 
particular weakness is liable to be kicked out of his 
job at any moment. . . . Also, it denies me the privi- 
lege of being able to freely express to young Johnson 
my candid opinion of him.” 

“And you think that a sufficient reason for risking 
your capital?” 

“Not altogether. . . . I’ve got a fancy, you see, 
that I could make the farm pay. The only trouble is 
to get anyone with the necessary share of capital to 
believe in me.” 

“I haven’t a doubt of you,” Heckraft interposed. 

“It’s wattle bark as a paying industry you doubt, I 
take it, then?” 

“I allow to being a bit dubious there. There is ad- 
mittedly no unlimited demand for wattle bark, and 
seeing how much land in Natal and elsewhere is being 
put into wattle, the market is bound to be affected. 
It’s the small growers who will suffer most from the 
depression.” 

“Even allowing that,” Gommet returned confidently, 
“the demand for good quality bark will not decrease 
to such an appreciable extent that it won’t permit 
of a margin of profit. If you’re going to work for a 
fortune, then give up the idea at once; if you’re con- 
tent to work for a living, wattles will supply it.” 

“A living will suffice,” Heckraft put in. 

“Besides,” Gommet proceeded, warming to his sub- 


62 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


ject, “-the changes mooted in the treatment of the 
bark will make for a greater prosperity. It will give 
a tremendous impetus to the industry when we extract 
the tannin before shipment. We don’t do enough of 
our own work in this country ; we’re so fond of send- 
ing out the raw materials and giving to other coun- 
tries the labour we ought to keep in our own. There’s 
a lack of enterprise, — of ambition, among South Afri- 
cans — or has been in the past. We’re waking up now ; 
and I see a greater, if less spasmodic, prosperity for 
this country in the future. When we’re finished with 
the monopolists — damn them! — and have a proper 
grip on our own independence and individual worth, 
— when we’ve grown out of regarding this as a young 
country still requiring a wet nurse, then we can look 
to see South Africa a country for South Africans 
to be proud of belonging to, not, as the average Eng- 
lishman regards it to-day, as a market-place for his 
commercial abilities, the results of which he retires 
to the mother-land to spend. That’s why to-day we 
are a lesser power in Africa than the Dutch. To the 
Dutchman this land is Home, to the average Britisher 
it is simply exile.” 

“And do you think the average Britisher will ever 
get over that feeling entirely?” Heckraft inquired 
skeptically. “Man, have you got over it ? . . . Isn’t the 
love of Home as the very marrow of your bones?” 

“That’s just it,” Gommet answered. “But we’ve 
got to remedy that. We don’t want merely the capi- 
talist out here, the bird of passage, — we don’t want 
only the weak lungs, and weaker principles. We want 
the emigrant, — the man who comes out voluntarily, — 
the man without a stake in the old country, who will 
settle on the land, and rear children on it, to take his 
place and rear others to come after them. That’s 
what we want, and if we hope to make a British Col- 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 63 


ony proper of this, it will have to come. . . . I’m not 
against the Union, though I think in the matter of the 
double language the thing is carried to extremes. We 
don’t want divided interests between Boer and Briton ; 
the interest of the South African should be identical. 
There’s room for both. The Dutch are agricultural- 
ists, we are mechanics ; they are conservative, we are 
progressive ; it is a good combination. Brotherly love 
will grow out of it, — and inter-marriage.” 

“That’s been going on for some time,” Heckraft re- 
turned. 

“I know it. I want to see more of it yet.” 

“You’re a thorough Unionist,” Heckraft said with 
a laugh. “There’s no half and half measure about 
you.” 

“No ; only in the matter of the language. I should 
like to kill that. I resent getting my mail stamped 
' Unie van Zuid Afrika,’ and reading a double notice 
over every government concern. Sentiment is a rot- 
ten foundation to attempt building a virile structure 
upon. If the Taal had any dignified claim to be con- 
sidered, one could sympathise with its struggle to live ; 
but it has served its purpose, and should now be rele- 
gated to the past with the obsolete and inefficient in- 
ventions which served in a less advanced age. It has 
no literary value; it is of no use in any sense out- 
side the Union ; it’s of precious little use in it. It will 
kill itself in time ; but because we are a nation of sen- 
timentalists we give it a renewed lease of life by en- 
couraging its use. We want another prophet to arise, 
a second John Cecil Rhodes — not necessarily to carry 
on Rhodes’ work, but to take up a line of his own, and 
pull the country successfully through the difficult 
period of transition.” 

“Two great brains don’t usually follow in such 
rapid succession,” Heckraft remarked. 


64 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


“A great brain!” Gommet repeated musingly. . . . 
“A great brain — and a great unscrupulousness. ... It 
takes both to qualify the blundering of the sentimen- 
talist. You’ll notice that the men who have achieved 
the biggest things have been mostly unscrupulous, — 
it’s a necessary qualification to fling in the balance 
against the finer attribute. ... I want to see a great 
statesman arise in Africa, a man with large ideas, and 
sufficient personality and force to drive his ideas 
through. The majority are not sufficiently disinter- 
ested. We are place-seekers, time-servers, — bent on 
making our pile, or getting a knighthood. Self-inter- 
est steps in and stultifies our natures. That’s the rea- 
son the prophets are so rare, the reason, too, why they 
are growing rarer as our civilization advances. The 
man who works for recognition, for advancement, can 
never plunge fearlessly forward; he inclines an ear 
here, an ear there, till, however brilliant his promise, 
his judgment becomes warped and fettered, and he 
falls into line with the rest. . . . He becomes some- 
thing of a fixed planet, no longer a brilliant shooting 
star. It’s a shooting star Africa needs ; they can keep 
the planets in England, where nothing appears to be 
stirring except the political agitators — principally the 
Suffragettes.” 

He laughed, and rising abruptly, went to a cup- 
board in the room, and produced whisky and glasses. 

“Fill up,” he said to Heckraft, and mixed himself 
a glass. “Here’s to the Suffragettes,” he said, toss- 
ing off the drink. “They at least are not satisfied to 
sit quiet under injustice. They teach us a lesson in 
courage and devotion and disinterestedness. It’s a 
grand thing for man or woman to have a great 
cause to fight for. It’s the Suffragettes we may look 
to to produce the prophets of the future.” 

Heckraft was not greatly interested in the subject. 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 65 


He regarded the feminist agitation as a morbid growth 
that had sprung up unaccountably amid a nation’s 
prosperous ease to disturb and irritate peaceable citi- 
zens with its hysterical and incomprehensible de- 
mands. It was a phase, he imagined, in the world’s 
history that would die with the same unexpectedness 
as it appeared to him to have been born. It did not 
trouble him seriously because he had never seriously 
considered it. 

“Your prophet, if you look to the Suffragettes to 
produce him, will be a fairly destructive prophet,” he 
said drily. 

“He’ll be virile, and not afraid to brave opposition, 
anyhow. He will not be easy to entice from the 
road he sets forth to travel. He’ll march straight 
ahead for his goal.” 

“And when he can’t get his own way, he’ll break 
things, I suppose? I’m not dazzled at the prospect. 
The Suffragettes don’t appeal to me. I was quite 
sympathetic towards the women’s cause till they re- 
sorted to disorderly conduct. That has alienated my 
sympathy entirely. There are bigger questions of the 
Empire to be settled than the woman’s vote.” 

“Man, you think that? . . . Why, the women and 
children are the Empire, — the vital and important 
part of it. I don’t consider the women have lost any- 
thing in forfeiting your sympathy. And I rather ex- 
pect that’s the view they take with regard to the 
sympathy of the public generally. What benefit is 
your sympathy to them? Negative help is no help. 
You personally, and those who think like you, are re- 
sponsible for the Suffragette. She has arisen after 
half a century of sympathetic apathy, — and you are 
one of her unnatural parents, unnatural because, 
having begotten her, you are for disowning your 
work. Should we men remain passively acquiescent 


66 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


if a concerted demand of ours met with such apathetic 
indifference, and was shelved time after time? I 
rather fancy we should get up and break things too. 
I know I should — and they’d be heads, not windows. 
I’d see somebody suffered besides myself.” 

“It occurs to me that it’s agitating, and not wattles, 
you ought to go in for,” Heckraft interposed with a 
laugh. Gommet laughed with him. 

“If a man is going to be an agitator he has got to 
keep sober,” he observed, “otherwise he’ll have no 
influence. And an agitator without influence is 
merely an annoyance.” 

“He is an annoyance in any case,” Heckraft re- 
torted. 

Gommet refilled his glass. 

“Only to those whose comfort is threatened. We’re 
so damned selfish; that’s why we object to change; 
we can’t get away from the personal view. We are so 
afraid how this reform, or that, will affect our in- 
dividual circumstance that we oppose it straight away 
in order to be on the safe side. But progress is a 
mighty river which cannot be stemmed ; and those who 
seek to hinder its advance by attempting to dam it, 
only slightly divert its channel, or, as more often hap- 
pens, — take the case of the Suffragettes — cause it to 
overflow its banks with disastrous results.” 

Gommet lifted his glass, took a drink therefrom, 
and eyed Heckraft steadily over the rim. 

“You’ll say, I suppose, that it’s because I have 
nothing to lose that I’m so ready to welcome the rush 
of modern progress? In which case, allowing there 
is something in that argument, I assert that it is a 
good thing for the world that there are so many in it 
with little to risk. If wealth narrows the sympathies, 
let it remain with the few. Besides, it’s good for 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 67 


man — for woman too — to have to strive for exist- 
ence; it brings out qualities of endurance and self- 
reliance that a comfortable leisure never develops. 
. . . And that brings me back to the starting point. 
If you go in with me for this wattle scheme, it will 
mean harder work than you’re accustomed to, and a 
greater uncertainty. You know now that as long as 
you give satisfaction you’ll keep your job; the ques- 
tion when you’re an owner will be whether your job 
will keep you. There’s a distinction between those 
two points which appeals strongly to me — but, then, 
I’m not afraid of risks.” 

Heckraft drummed softly on the table-cloth with 
his fingers, and fidgeted with the tumbler of whisky 
which failed to keep pace with the rapidly diminish- 
ing contents of Gommet’s glass. 

“I don’t know that I’m especially afraid of risks 
either,” he answered. “The fact is, when I called in 
here to-night, I purposed telling you that I’d made up 
my mind on the matter, but your unwonted eloquence 
left me no opportunity.” 

Gommet grinned. 

“I don’t often gas like that,” he said. He favoured 
Heckraft with a long puzzled scrutiny. “It’s odd,” he 
added after a pause, “how you draw a man out. It’s 
not what you say either. I don’t talk readily to many 
people. . . . And that recalls another suggestion I 
had it in mind to make. You’re not comfortable at 
the hotel, you say. Then, why not shift your traps 
here? I’ve a spare room, and Rudgubadi cooks very 
well. You’d get decently served. And it works out 
two ways, — we’d keep the money in the firm. If we’re 
going to be partners, that is a consideration.” 

Heckraft nodded. 

“Your business qualities are sufficiently sound to 
minimise the risks you mentioned awhile since,” he 


68 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


said, smiling. "I foresee our future labours crowned 
with a fair success.” 

“We’ll drag a living out of the ground,” Gommet 
said with a certain dogged obstinacy. “But if we 
start planting at once it will take from five to six 
years before we can look for a return.” 

“I suppose so. But we’ll not throw up this job 
with any undue haste.” 

“No,” Gommet rejoined, and looked up with a 
contortion of the facial muscles that resembled a 
twisted grin. “Only when young Johnson discovers, 
as he is bound to do, that we’ve bought a farm, he’ll 
make that an excuse for trying to get rid of you.” 

“Why of me particularly?” 

“Well, of both of us — but you in any case.” 

“But Johnson has no grudge against me,” Heckraft 
insisted. 

“Oh ! he’s a queer chap,” Gommet replied fragmen- 
tarily. “Laughs with his nose, and is mean with his 
money. Don’t pin your faith on his good will because 
he appears friendly. He’ll do you down one day.” 

“Rot!” Heckraft ejaculated. 

“I daresay it is. Never mind that; it’s not worth 
considering. Let’s get to business. There’s any 
amount of detail I want to go into with you.” 

Gommet took up his pencil again, and plunged 
straightway into a business talk. 


VIII 


A LIETA VAN DER VYVER was puzzled. 
Morning after morning she waited at the 
boundary fence, but Heckraft did not join her. 
Every evening she looked to see him ride out to 
Odsani, and he did not come. She wondered why he 
should so suddenly neglect his friends, and was hurt 
by his behaviour, as well as puzzled to account for it. 
If he had found other interests, he might remember 
that he had taught her to depend largely on himself 
for the break in the day’s monotony, and find occasion 
to devote a little of his time to her. His defection, 
however, pleased Mrs. Van der Vyver. This suitor 
with the unlined pockets had accepted his dismissal as 
she had meant he should ; there was no further cause 
for uneasiness on that head. To Alieta she gave sole 
charge of the dairy, observing that Alieta showed 
signs of restlessness, and being well aware that work 
is the best antidote for mental unrest. It was too 
great leisure that was responsible for the breeding of 
idle fancies in the mind of youth. 

Alieta took up the extra work without comment. 
It tied her somewhat, but was not on the whole un- 
congenial. She had been brought up on the simple 
principle that one should earn the food one ate; that 
the bread of independence is sweet, and the labour of 
one’s hands a dignified satisfaction. It was one of 
the tenets of her childhood with which she was 
thoroughly in sympathy. That woman should shirk 
her share in the day’s toil, and be content to accept 
69 


70 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


everything from the man was a condition of parasit- 
ism that would have lowered her sense of her sex’ 
importance in human affairs, and Alieta held her sex 
in very good esteem. 

It was somewhat strange that it never occurred to 
Alieta that the extent to which she missed Heckraft’s 
society was unusual between friends. She had grown 
so used to the position of affairs with regard to her 
relationship to Harold Johnson, had accepted Heck- 
raft so unquestioningly as a friend, that the danger 
of the growing intimacy was not apparent to her as it 
had become to him. It was not until he ceased his 
visits that she realised how much his friendship meant 
to her, how greatly she missed it. 

“When I meet him again,” she told herself, “I will 
ask him what I have done that he never comes to see 
me any more.” 

But when she did meet him a few weeks later a 
strange shyness came over her, and the words with 
which she had meant to reproach him found no ut- 
terance. 

She was riding along the road one morning in the 
direction of the station when Heckraft came out upon 
her from the cover of the wattles. He reined in his 
horse immediately, and an unmistakable look of pleas- 
ure chased the gravity from his face. Alieta felt her- 
self flushing unaccountably. The readiness which us- 
ually characterised her speech deserted her, and all 
she found to say was the baldest of conventional 
greetings. He leant over and shook hands. Alieta, 
unprepared, and oddly disconcerted at the meeting, 
dropped her riding whip in her embarrassment. 

“I’m clumsy,” she said; the vexed colour dyeing 
her cheeks as he swung himself from the saddle and 
stooped for it where it lay in the dust of the road. 

He handed the whip up to her, and remained stand- 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 71 

ing in the road beside her horse with the reins of his 
own animal over his arm. 

“It’s a long time since I’ve seen you,” he said, his 
eyes on her face. “Quite a lot of things have hap- 
pened to me within the last month.” 

“What sort of things?” she asked. 

“I’ve shifted my quarters, for one thing. I’m tent 
companion with Gommet now. And I’ve become a 
landowner.” 

Alieta opened her eyes in surprise. 

“We’ve bought a farm,” he said. 

“I knew Mr. Gommet thought of buying Nooitge- 
dacht,” she replied. 

“That’s the place,” he said. “We’ve gone in to- 
gether. It now remains to be seen how soon we be- 
come bankrupt. . . . What does Nooitgedacht mean, 
by the way?” 

“Never thought of.” 

“That rather fits, doesn’t it?” he said, and looked at 
her musingly. “I never thought of it when I came 
out — never thought of becoming a landowner and set- 
tling out here, I mean. And now ” He looked 

about him, and then back into her face. — “Now,” he 
added, “I suppose I’ll finish out my span among these 
hills.” 

Alieta rubbed her horse’s neck idly with the little 
hide whip he had restored to her, moving the whip 
lightly backwards and forwards along the satin coat. 

“And does that thought satisfy you?” she asked, 
without raising her eyes. 

“I own I have nursed larger ambitions,” he replied. 
“But after all, so long as a man fill his days with 
honest industry what more is there for him to do? 

“At least,” she said, and smiled suddenly, “it means 
we shall keep you as a neighbour,” 


72 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


“That’s kind of you,” he answered, resting his hand 
beside hers on her horse’s neck. 

There followed a brief pause, a pause during which 
thoughts formed themselves into words in both minds 
which neither gave voice to, the inarticulate expres- 
sion of impulsive ideas prompted by propinquity and 
natural inclination. Heckraft was tempted to say 
many things he dared not, and Alieta was tormented 
with a desire to ask simply: 

“Why is it you never come now to the old haunts ?” 

“I suppose,” she said presently, breaking the si- 
lence, “you have been unusually busy of late?” 

“Yes,” he answered briefly. “There’s been a lot 
to see to.” 

“This new interest must take up much of your 
leisure.” 

“All of it,” he returned. “Gommet doesn’t know 
what fatigue is, and he won’t let me off. He’s for 
having the land ploughed up next week preparatory 
to planting.” 

“Who’s going to plant for you ?” Alieta inquired. 

“Oh! we’re getting a competent man with a gang 
of boys to do the work. It’s running risks, of course; 
but there’s nothing else for it.” 

“And then you’ll give up here?” 

They looked at one another. 

“That will have to come too eventually,” he replied. 

“There’s no boundary fence between Odsani and 
Nooitgedacht,” she said, and blushed. “You’ll be 
further away.” 

“You forget,” he returned, smiling faintly, “you’ll 
be further away still. It is you who will make the 
first move.” 

Alieta made no response, but into the brown eyes 
flashed a look that was slightly mutinous. Why did 
he always remind her of the coming change in her 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 73 


life? He seemed to take it for granted that her mar- 
riage loomed in the immediate foreground of future 
events. 

Heckraft patted the horse’s neck thoughtfully, and 
in doing so his hand accidentally touched hers. The 
emotional tension to which both were strung was suf- 
ficiently strained to cause a mutual embarrassment 
at the contact which so trifling an accident could not 
at another time have brought about. Heckraft was 
conscious of his quickened pulses, of the mad coursing 
of the blood in his veins, as he muttered a hasty apol- 
ogy and withdrew his hand ; at the same moment, help- 
ing him in some measure to the recovery of his com- 
posure, while adding in an equal degree to Alieta’s 
discomfiture, a motor car flashed round the curve of 
the road and stopped dead beside them. 

“Hallo !” cried Harold Johnson’s surprised voice. 

There was a ring of dissatisfaction in the voice, an 
expression of suspicious inquiry in his eyes as they 
took in the scene. He wondered angrily at the time, 
and later demanded of Alieta, why she allowed his 
manager to stand stroking her hand in the roadway. 

“You didn’t expect to see me,” he said, with a 
meaning in his tones which did not escape Alieta. 

She turned a crimson, decidedly angry face towards 
him. Heckraft was fully occupied in holding his 
horse, which had reared at the approach of the motor, 
and showed a disposition to bolt. It occasioned John- 
son a savage satisfaction to observe the trouble the 
brute was giving. Alieta also experienced satisfac- 
tion of a different nature in watching the exhibition 
of strength. The masterly manner in which the man 
controlled the nervous animal aroused her admiration. 
Removing her glance from Johnson’s face in order to 
watch the conflict, she surveyed the scene in the road 
with an interest that secretly angered him in its de- 


74 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


tachment from himself. For the first time in his 
life he knew what it was to feel jealous. A doubt 
crept into his mind as to his certain possession of 
her, and the doubt enhanced her value a thousand fold 
in his eyes. He was as a man who, having found a 
treasure in the wilderness, and being carelessly confi- 
dent of his possession, having taken no precaution to 
either hide, or secure, it to himself, now realised that 
other eyes had discovered his prize, and that unless 
he asserted at once his prior right to possession other 
hands would reach forth and gather up the treasure 
he had felt it no immediate necessity to claim. 

“You do not give me much of a welcome,” he said. 

Heckraft having got his horse fairly under control, 
Alieta found time to look round. 

“You cause so much disturbance by your appear- 
ance,” she said, “I have no breath to welcome you 
with.” 

“Now that you have found your breath, you might 
say you are glad to see me,” he suggested. 

She laughed. 

“Have you any serious doubts on that head?” she 
asked. 

‘Til have to break this brute of his antipathy to 
motors,” Heckraft remarked, as, after three ineffect- 
ual attempts to mount, he finally gained the saddle, 
and rode the nervous animal close to the car. “He 
shies at anything. One has to be constantly on the 
alert when riding him.” 

“He spilt a man once, and did for him,” Johnson 
said, grinning. “I bought him cheap after the mis- 
hap.” 

Alieta looked at him sharply. 

“Then I don’t think you ought to keep him for 
your managers to ride.” 

“There are other mounts at the stables,” he an- 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 75 


swered indifferently. “There’s no obligation for any- 
one to ride that particular horse if he’s scared of 
him.” 

Heckraft laughed shortly. The speech so nearly re- 
sembled a challenge in its covert reflection on his 
courage that he felt it incumbent on him to take it up. 

“This is the only decent horse you’ve got, except 
the animal Gommet uses,” he retorted. “And I’m 
not easily scared.” 

“We don’t provide a special mount for Gommet,” 
Johnson answered; “his work doesn’t require it. If 
you choose to risk your neck riding that brute, it’s 
your lookout.” 

He descended from the car and went round to 
Alieta’s side for the purpose of helping her to dis- 
mount. 

“Come,” he said; “I’m going to drive you back. 
Heckraft will take your horse. One of the Coolies 
can bring it out.” 

But Alieta, resenting the manner in which he im- 
posed this task on the manager without even troubling 
to consult him, refused to dismount 

“I prefer to ride,” she said. “It is troubling Mr. 
Heckraft unnecessarily. And I don’t trust Fleetfoot 
to any Coolie. He doesn’t object to motors. I’ll 
ride beside you.” 

“Very well.” 

Johnson’s tone was sulkily acquiescent. He turned 
away and took his seat again in the car. 

“I’ll see you later,” he called to Heckraft curtly, 
as the car began to move. Alieta stayed to take a 
more friendly farewell ; and Heckraft felt a sense of 
angry disgust rise within him as he watched her ride 
through the cloud of dust raised by the swiftly trav- 
elling motor in order to overtake it. If a man could 
treat a woman like that before marriage, he reflected, 


76 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


it augured a very uncertain chance of happiness for 
the woman afterwards. 

“You are displeased about something,” Alieta said, 
as she cantered her horse beside the car, which slowed 
down at her approach. 

“Isn’t it enough to displease a man,” he returned 
gloomily, “to come upon the girl he is engaged to 
spooning with his manager in the open road?” 

“That is a very gross misstatement,” Alieta an- 
swered with dignity. 

“He was holding your hand. . . . What the devil 
do you mean by allowing Heckraft to stand stroking 
your hand in the roadway? Are you in love with the 
fellow? ... Or is it merely your vanity leading him 
on to a flirtation?” 

“You forget yourself,” she answered in a danger- 
ously level voice. “When you speak to me like that, 
I must protect myself from insult by refusing to an- 
swer you.” 

Her manner subdued the man. He became apolo- 
getic and self-explanatory. He had not meant any- 
thing by his words; he had spoken in the heat of 
the moment. When a man had been starved for two 
months, it was rough on him that the first glimpse 
he caught of the girl he had hungered for should re- 
veal her in a compromising attitude with another 
man, no matter how simple the explanation of that 
position might be. 

“I’m a jealous fool, I know, but I can’t stand it,” 
he jerked out, not looking at the girl, but at the road 
ahead with sombre, intent gaze. “I’ve been wanting 
to get here for weeks, but the governor has kept my 
nose to the grindstone till I feel fairly exasperated. 
I’ve been up country most of the time, fooling round 
on business another man might have undertaken 
equally well — better, very likely. I’m going to put a 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 77 


stop to it. . . . I’m going to have it out with him. 
. . . It’s ridiculous, this waiting. ... I want to get 
married, and I don’t see any damn reason why I 
shouldn’t. We’ll get married at once, Alieta, and I’ll 
take you out of this for good. You shan’t see a wat- 
tle plantation for the rest of your days.” 

He turned his head and looked at her. Alieta rode 
beside the car very silent, with her face strangely 
still and composed. As he jerked his head round, 
she moved hers, and her steady eyes met his. 

“There is no reason why we should wait. . . . 
You’re ready?” he said. 

“I don’t know.” 

She kept her grave, unflinching eyes on his. The 
steadiness of their look disconcerted him. There was 
that about her, a kind of quiet force that stood for 
power, which frequently had him at a disadvantage. 
While conscious of it in a vague way, he was far 
from understanding it. It formed one of the in- 
tangible discords between them. 

“But you — wanted it once,” he almost stuttered. 
“Not so very long ago you said you’d be thankful to 
get away.” He paused and stared at her, the colour 
deepening in his face. “That was before Heckraft 
came,” he added. 

Alieta felt the thrust; it took her unawares, and 
embarrassed her to a degree which entirely swamped 
her anger. She owed it to herself to still that ugly 
suspicion. After all, there was some justification for 
the doubt of her which was shaping itself in his 
mind. Before Heckraft came she had been eager to 
fly from the solitudes; it was since his arrival that 
she had learnt to find a quiet happiness among the 
hills. 

“I remember,” she said. “There was a time when 


78 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 

I was very restless, and longed for any change. I 
bothered you a lot then, I don’t doubt/’ 

“I liked being bothered in that way,” he answered 
sulkily. “I’d like to see you as eager now to get 
out of this as you once were. . . . What’s caused you 
to change ?” 

She smiled at him. 

“Are you so sure that' I have changed ?” 

“Well, the conditions of your life haven’t altered,” 
he answered, “yet you seem satisfied with them as they 
are.” 

“Oh! no.” She shook her head. “I’m far from 
satisfied. You see, I am one of those people who 
are not easily satisfied, and who never remain satis- 
fied for long. Besides, the conditions of my life 
here have altered in certain ways ; I’m busier than I 
used to me, and I’m learning patience from the hills.” 

“Damn the hills !” he exclaimed irritably. “You’ve 
learnt that cult from Heckraft. He talked a lot of 
drivel about the hills at one time.” 

“He talks about the hills still, but not drivel,” Alieta 
replied. 

The car bumped over a stone, and skidded in the 
thick dust of the road ; its driver swore. Alieta, with 
a steady hand upon her rein, looked on unmoved. 

“You see a lot of one another, it seems,” he said. 

He watched her suspiciously while he spoke. Some- 
one at the hotel had been opening his eyes in respect 
of much that happened in his absence. He knew 
more of her intimacy with Heckraft than Alieta had 
any idea of. 

“We see very little of one another lately,” she an- 
swered quietly. “Mr. Heckraft, also, is busier than 
formerly.” 

“Yes,” he returned curtly. “I’ve heard of that too.” 

She looked him straight in the eyes. 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 79 


“You are straining my patience very thin,” she 
said. “I can make allowance for you up to a certain 
point, but be careful how you go too far. Mr. Heck- 
raft is a friend of mine. As a friend, I value his 
acquaintance highly, and I cannot listen without anger 
to the base insinuations you are making. Can’t you 
see, Harold, how poor an opinion you show yourself 
to hold of the woman you think to marry by these 
paltry doubts which you are not above harbouring?” 

He reddened, and looked, she was pleased to see, 
somewhat ashamed as he answered : 

“You know I don’t hold a poor opinion of you. It’s 
just because I’m so head over ears in love with you 
that I can’t bear the thought of your looking kindly 
on another man. . . . I’m a fool. I know it. But 
you’re stand-offish, Alieta, and you used not to be. I 
want to get married at once, and you seem no longer 
keen.” 

“Was I ever keen?” Alieta asked. — “To get mar- 
ried, I mean?” 

“Well, you didn’t imagine, I take it, that we’d go 
on being engaged indefinitely?” 

“No; I didn’t imagine that — at least, I think not. 
But — marriage !” 

“It’s got to be some time,” he argued with a sullen 
defiance that made her feel suddenly sorry for him. 
He looked rather like a great boy at odds with life, 
and the maternal side of her nature took pity on 
him. 

“Have you spoken to your father about — me?” she 
asked. 

He reddened again, this time more deeply. 

“No.” He snapped the words at her. “My plan is 
to get married, and speak afterwards.” 

“That’s not fair to him,” she said quietly. 

“Oh, damn him!” he returned. 


86 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


“It’s not fair to me,” she continued, in the quiet, 
determined manner which he was seldom able to re- 
sist. He looked at her quickly. 

“If he knew you, it would be different,” he said. 

“Then let me go and make his acquaintance.” 

“No. . . . afterwards.” 

She smiled faintly, and pulling off the glove from 
her left hand, drew off her engagement ring, and held 
it out to him. 

“Go to him,” she said, “and tell him of your en- 
gagement. Take this. When you have done what 
I say, you may bring it back to me.” 

He made no movement to take the ring, though she 
leaned sideways from her horse, proffering it between 
her fingers. 

“There’ll be the devil of a row,” he said. “He’ll 
not listen to reason. . . . He’ll not give his consent.” 

“You will at least have done the right thing,” she 
persisted, — “by him, and by me. . . . Take it. Until 
you do what I say, there is no engagement.” 

He looked at her with the ready suspicion of her, 
which once having found room in his mind it was 
not easy for him to get rid of, shining in his eyes. 

“It’s not just a way of backing out?” he demanded 
breathlessly. 

For a moment Alieta looked passionately angry, the 
next, meeting his miserable, distrustful, absurdly boy- 
ish eyes, she smiled. 

“It is not a way of backing out,” she answered. 
“On the contrary it will seal the compact between us.” 


IX 


D URING the next few days Alieta looked often 
at her left hand, denuded of its brilliant circlet, 
and there was a quiet satisfaction in her eyes. 
The absence of the outward sign of her engagement, 
and her satisfaction in this temporary freedom, set her 
wondering whether she was being quite fair to Harold 
Johnson and to herself in letting the engagement 
stand. And yet she saw no reason why it should ter- 
minate. She was conscious of no alteration in her 
regard for him, and she had felt no hesitation at the 
time when she accepted him. He was the same now 
as then. If there were any change it was in herself. 
She felt differently about things, without knowing why. 
She did not wish to marry. As once she had felt 
dissatisfaction with her life, she now felt dissatisfied 
at the thought of change. 

Not for one moment did she consider Heckraft re- 
sponsible for the alteration in her outlook. Despite 
Johnson's jealous hints, she neither considered her- 
self in love with Heckraft, nor imagined him to be 
in love with her. But somehow her horizon had 
widened, and what had once occurred to her as pleas- 
ant no longer appealed in the same way. She con- 
cluded that she must be inconsistent and decided to 
correct this error before it became a confirmed fault. 
She was not justified in lightly accepting a man’s love, 
and later, for no particular reason, rejecting it. 
When he brought her back his ring she would let him 
81 


82 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


replace it on her finger. He had said to her when 
he took it: “It will enable me to procure the second 
ring to go with it.” And he had placed it in his 
breast pocket as an earnest of his intention, and so 
dismissed the subject. 

But the task she had set him to perform was not 
an easy one. He knew the objections that would be 
raised, recognised too, with gloomy anger, that his 
father held the whip hand ; he was no more independ- 
ent, he was even less independent, than the least of 
his employees ; for he stood to lose, not only a salary, 
but his expected inheritance. The only point which 
seemed to elude him in the whole business was that 
the attitude he allowed himself to assume in thus 
placing himself in so subservient a position was wholly 
undignified. A person who looks for every favour 
at the hands of another has no claim to the ordering 
of his life, and to have no claim in this respect is 
humiliating to the individual. 

Young Johnson approached his father on the sub- 
ject of his engagement after dinner on the evening 
of his return from Drummond. Alieta’s ring seemed 
to burn a hole in his pocket, and the memory of her, 
as he had seen her that morning, with Heckraft stand- 
ing at her stirrup with her hand in his, the signifi- 
cance of their attitude, magnified and distorted in a 
mind, predisposed by the tales he had heard of the 
intimacy between them to see evil where none existed, 
so inflamed his jealousy, which being hitherto an un- 
known emotion with him was all the less endurable, 
that he could not refrain from venting his spite on 
the man by seeking to prejudice him in his father’s 
opinion. He spoke of the farm which Heckraft and 
Gommet had purchased, and tried with ill success to 
point out that this venture would be prejudicial to 
their own interests. 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 83 


“In what way?” asked Johnson, senior. “I confess 
I can’t see why they shouldn’t buy a farm, and 
since they can’t possibly work it for the next five 
years at least, it appears to me to call for no immedi- 
ate concern.” 

“They are not going to study your interests,” his 
son persisted, “when they have a separate interest 
in their own farm ; they’ll neglect your affairs in the 
business of looking after their own. That’s human 
nature.” 

“You seem to have a fairly low conception of hu- 
man nature,” the older man remarked. 

Young Johnson snipped the end off a cigar, and 
lighted it ill-temperedly. 

“I don’t like Heckraft,” he said. “I don’t trust him. 
This opposition scheme is his idea.” 

“Nonsense! I’ve heard Gommet speak of it a dozen 
times. Besides, the land’s there, and pretty well only 
fitted for wattles. If they didn’t plant it, someone 
else would. If I’d wanted to I could have bought up 
that farm two years ago.” 

“Why didn’t you?” 

“Oh ! wattle bark is not a great money making con- 
cern. I can invest my capital to greater advantage.” 

“You’d do better with wattles if you didn’t employ 
incompetent people,” his son asserted. “Gommet is 
all right, but that fellow, Heckraft, knows nothing 
about the business. He’s simply learning at your ex- 
pense with a view to gaining knowledge to turn to his 
own account.” 

“He’s a wise man,” returned Johnson, senior, im- 
perturbably, “to profit by his experiences. So long 
as he doesn’t neglect his present job, I see no reason 
to object.” 

“It’s all very fine to talk in that strain, but how can 
you tell he isn’t neglecting his job? I’d get rid of him 


84 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


before he turns round and tells you he’s had enough 
of working for you.” 

“Heckraft being a gentleman will leave my employ 
like a gentleman,” the other answered with the ob- 
stinacy characteristic of him, an obstinacy which his‘ 
son inherited in a marked degree, though the son’s 
obstinacy showed usually in a more unfavourable 
light, being influenced by a less matured and well- 
regulated judgment. 

“Besides,” added Mr. Johnson, after a slight pause, 
“Heckraft’s position with me is different from that 
of the general run of managers. I employed him to 
oblige Sir George Rath, and I have no intention of 
annoying my old friend by dismissing a protege of 
his for no sufficient reason.” 

“Oh, well!” exclaimed young Johnson irritably, 
dropping his cigar-ash into an empty wineglass, “if 
you’re going to work on those quixotic lines you 
must be prepared to lose. I’ve given you the tip, 
that’s all that concerns me. You know now what’s 
going on.” 

The older man looked hard at the younger as he 
sat back in his chair and smoked deliberately. His 
son’s suddenly kindled interest in the Drummond wat- 
tle estate piqued his curiosity. 

“I know something of what is going on,” he an- 
swered, but without pointing the significance of the 
remark which was lost upon his hearer. “But the 
information doesn’t amount to much. I had no idea, 
by the way, that you purposed going to Drummond 
to-day.” 

The young man reddened, and fidgeted with the 
stem of a wineglass. He felt the keen eyes opposite 
boring into him, and for the life of him he could not 
at the moment have raised his own to meet them. He 
was conscious of something in his father’s manner that 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 85 


hinted at — was it knowledge, or merely a suspicion 
of what it lay in his mind to tell him? Instinctively 
his hand went furtively to his breast-pocket where 
Alieta’s ring lay, the pledge of his promise to her, 
the seal of a mutual compact, and then as furtively 
strayed back again to the glass, which he toyed 
with as before, twisting it round so that the wine 
dregs caught the ash he had dropped into it, slowly 
dissolving it. He appeared to watch the action of the 
wine on the white ash with the concentration of a man 
observing a scientific experiment; in reality his mind 
was detached altogether from his occupation, and was 
not even consciously aware of the component parts 
in the glass he was nervously handling. 

“I often run up — when I’m in town,” he jerked out 
as the finish of a lengthy pause. 

“Yes !” 

The syllable did not help him much, but he was 
braced now to the disclosure, and he plunged head- 
long into the business as though his present haste 
would make up for his former reluctance. 

“There’s someone there I’m very interested in. I 
go to see — Her.” 

“Oh, indeed! Who is— Her?” 

Young Johnson saw fit to ignore the sarcasm of the 
tone in which the question was asked, and replied with 
steadily growing composure. 

“You know Jacobus Van der Vyver? He’s the 
biggest) landowner in the district. . . . She is his 
daughter.” 

A longer pause followed upon this speech. Neither 
man smoked now. The younger had put aside his 
cigar when he started upon the subject; the older 
man’s was gripped between his fingers, and the hand 
lay motionless on the table beside his untouched glass 
of whisky and soda. Here at last was this thing 


86 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


which had threatened, hitting him in his most vulner- 
able spot — the seat of his social ambitions. He had 
planned a marriage for his son with Sir George Rath’s 
daughter, a girl remarkable for neither beauty nor 
brilliance of wit, but with the weight of a great influ- 
ence in her father’s position sufficient to render the 
possession of either quality unnecessary in Johnson 
senior’s opinion. But the two Johnsons did not see 
things from the same point of view. 

“A Boer farmer’s girl, eh?” he said with a sneer. 
"I trust that, while amusing yourself in such com- 
pany, you will be careful to avoid an entanglement.” 

The young man looked up quickly. His eyes were 
hostile, the full red lips under the fair moustache 
twitched with nervous indignation. What he could 
not stand, even from his father, was to hear Alieta 
referred to in this insulting manner. 

“You either wilfully misapprehend my meaning or 
are grossly mistaken,” he exclaimed with a fierceness 
that caused his listener to raise his brows in a show 
of faint surprise. “I am not amusing myself. I am 
engaged to marry Alieta Van der Vyver.” 

Johnson senior leaned across the table, and looked 
hard into the flushed, angry face of his son. His own 
anger was of the cold, contained order, more deadly 
and unrelenting than any violence of passionate 
wrath, and when he spoke it was in the measured 
tones of a man who delivers his ultimatum. 

“I cannot countenance such an engagement,” he 
said with curt decisiveness. “I do not wish to hear 
anything further on the subject. I shall treat it as 
though I had not heard it. So long as I hear nothing 
further of this, things will remain as they have been 
between us; but if you seek to bring an unwelcome 
daughter-in-law home to me, you will find the doors 
of this house closed to you, and you will have to 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 87 


provide for your wife without any assistance, or 
hope of future benefits from me. I have said all I 
intend to say on the subject, and I will listen to 
nothing you have to urge in defence of your choice. 
You’ve got to give up one of two things, this girl or 
your position as my son. You cannot maintain both. 
I will never countenance a marriage between my son 
and any Dutchwoman.” 

Harold Johnson rose to his feet, pushing his chair 
back with a violence that upset it, and remaining 
with his hand clenched upon the table, oblivious of 
the accident. 

“I think you’re damnably unfair,” he stuttered, — 
“damnably.” 

With which he swung round on his heel and strode 
in sullen haste towards the door. 

“Damnably unfair,” he repeated savagely, his hand 
on the doorknob, — “and unreasonable.” 

Then he went out and jerked the door to behind 
him. 

As he passed the drawing-room he hesitated, took 
a step towards the half-open door, then, changing his 
mind, went on to the staircase. With his hand on the 
newel he paused again, and, again changing his mind, 
turned about and strode resolutely back. He pushed 
the drawing-room door wider and entered. His 
mother was there alone, seated beside a small table 
on which a reading lamp stood, poring over fashion 
books. She was an artificial-looking woman, with 
dyed hair and a carefully made up complexion. In 
her youth she had been handsome, and she still strove 
at the age of fifty to retain the only asset of any 
importance she had ever possessed. She also posed 
as a “nice” woman. Her idea of niceness — it was 
also her husband’s, or had been at the time he married 
her — was to be entirely feminine, and her idea of 


88 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


femininity was a gracious softness of manner and 
an ignorance of evil, the result of a carefully guarded 
ease, sheltered from everything that was unpleasant 
and provided with everything that conduced to bodily 
ease and luxury. Her finest quality was her affection 
for her son. It was his tribute to, and realisation of, 
this quality which made him seek her now; as his 
former hesitation, and still half-reluctant approach, 
was the result of his complete comprehension of 
those other qualities of hers which instinctively told 
him that in this, the most important crisis of his life, 
she would not understand and would fail him utterly. 

She looked up from her paper when he halted in 
front of her, and surveyed his thwarted, boyish face 
with large, short-sighted, blue eyes, eyes which once 
had been extraordinarily like his own, which even 
yet were beautiful, though their owner was doing her 
utmost to ruin them because her vanity would not 
permit her to wear glasses. 

“You’ve been long enough talking business,” she 
said. “I began to wonder what kept you. What 
was it all about?” 

She asked without curiosity. She never wanted to 
hear about business. She had only a vague idea of 
what her husband’s business was. Business was an 
abstract term that signified masculine interests ; it only 
affected her in as far as it brought in a handsome 
income. 

“We had a row,” he answered. 

“Goodness!” she exclaimed mildly, but expressed 
no surprise. Rows were masculine too. When men 
got together one must expect them ; but one need not 
let them intrude into the drawing-room. “Couldn’t 
you have got it over quicker ?” she asked. 

“Look here, mother,” he said, and he drew up a 
chair and sat down beside her. “I know you don’t 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 89 

like that sort of thing, but you’ve got to be drawn 
into this. I want you to intercede for me.” 

“I couldn’t have a row with your father,” she said, 
surprised, and obviously perturbed. “He’d get the 
best of it, and it would only give me a headache. Be- 
sides, it isn’t nice.” 

In spite of discouragement young Johnson stuck 
grimly to his point. 

“I don’t want you to have a row, — of course not. 
You’ve got to be a go-between, and patch this matter 
up somehow.” 

“What is it?” she asked. — “Money?” 

She was sure this must be the cause of the trouble, 
because, though her own allowance was handsome 
enough to have kept a large family in comfort, she 
invariably exceeded it. 

“If you’re short, Harold, and it’s really pressing, 
I’ll wait for my emerald necklace a month or two and 
let you have what I can. . . . And I could do with 
a few less frocks, perhaps.” 

She gazed at the pile of fashion books wistfully. 
It was a boast of hers, and had become a recognised 
fact among her set, that she never appeared twice in 
public in the same dress. This was the greatest sac- 
rifice her shallow soul could conceive, and it was a 
proof of the depth of her affection for him that she 
made the proposal. But he swept it aside, impa- 
tient and unappreciative. 

“Money!” he repeated with a coarse indifference 
to the fastidious ears listening to him in shocked dis- 
tress. “Damn money! It’s the rotten money that 
gives him the upper hand. ... I want to marry, and 
I want to marry now.” 

“Why not?” she asked, so immeasurably relieved 
that she was not called upon to make any sacrifices 
that the usual maternal jealousy provoked by such 


go VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


disclosures failed to touch her. Already she was 
busy with a mental picture of a fashionable wedding, 
with herself, as mother of the bridegroom, sumptu- 
ously gowned, and long columns in the papers, and 
portraits of the wedding party in the leading jour- 
nals. 

He broke in ruthlessly on her pleasant reverie. 

“Because if I do,” he said, “it means the stopping 
of my allowance, — the cutting me off without a shil- 
ling. ... He won’t hear of it.” 

“But I’ve heard him say,” she argued, — “he’s 
spoken of it with Sir George, — that as soon as you 
think of settling down he’ll build you a house. . . . 
And Sir George wants you to go in for politics.” 

“What the devil has my career to do with Sir 
George Rath ?” he demanded. 

“But, of course,” his mother said, raising surprised 
eyes to his angry face, “you are going to marry 
Muriel Rath?” 

“Damn Muriel Rath!” he ejaculated, and his tone 
was increasingly bitter. “So that’s his reason for 
objecting to my making my choice without consult- 
ing him? . . . Since it is my concern, and nobody’s 
else, — since I’m going to live with her, I intend to 
select my own wife ; and I’m going to marry for love, 
and for no other reason.” 

Mrs. Johnson listened to his outburst in perplexed 
silence. She wrinkled her brow, and then, recollect- 
ing that this would bring lines, smoothed it out again 
and pressed her hand to her forehead. 

“Of course,” she said. “But why shouldn’t you 
love Muriel? She is quite a nice girl, — so feminine, 
and so yielding. And her father’s influence is tre- 
mendous.” 

The young man lost his temper ; it was of the qual- 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 91 

ity which easily gets mislaid. He bounced out of his 
seat. 

‘Tm sick of the sound of that name/’ he shouted. 
“Sir George Rath appears to be a sort of God Al- 
mighty in this house. And as for his puling, giggling 
daughter, she’s a fool. I wouldn’t marry her if she 
were the only woman in Africa.” 

“Don’t be violent, Harold,” Mrs. Johnson inter- 
posed hastily, in the manner of an elder correcting an 
impetuous child. “And Muriel Rath is not in Africa. 
She is in England at present. I heard from her last 
mail.” 

“I hope she’ll have the sense to remain in Eng- 
land,” he retorted rudely. 

He went behind her chair, and laid a persuasive 
hand upon her shoulder. 

“I want you to put the thought of Muriel as a pos- 
sible wife for me out of your head,” he said earnestly, 
and with a certain dignity that made its own appeal. 
“I’ve made my choice; and I’m going to marry the 
girl I love, or I won’t marry at all. That’s final.” 

“But, my dear boy,” she cried, looking up at him, 
“who is the girl? Is it anyone I know?” 

“No,” he answered. “It is Alieta Van der Vyver. 
Her people are big farmers near Inchanga.” 

“Harold !” 

She fairly gasped. Her painted, calculating face 
hardened. Gone were the visions of a fashionable 
wedding, dispersed like a dream at the dreamer’s 
awakening. All her ambitions for her son’s future 
faded into nothingness before this cold-blooded 
avowal of a preference for a Dutch girl over a woman 
of his own class and race. 

“Harold !” she repeated in a fainter tone. “You 
are jesting. You can’t be serious. Why, it would be 
social suicide to do what you propose.” 


92 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 

“Rot!” he ejaculated. “The Van der Vyvers’ blood 
is better than our own. They’re descendants of the 
oldest settlers.” 

“Blood !” she echoed in a tone of disgust. “What 
does blood count for in a country like this? If your 
Van der Vyver had the blue blood of all the Hol- 
landers in his veins he’d still be an unimportant old 
Boer. And with your father’s wealth, you might 
marry anyone!” 

“As far as wealth goes,” he sneered, “I daresay 
old Van der Vyver has as much as the governor. 
And as far as brains and beauty and personality go, 
his daughter is a queen to Muriel Rath. . . . But I 
suppose I am only wasting my breath. . . . You’re 
like the governor. You’ve made a fetich of ambition, 
so that you can’t see that it’s more decent for a man 
to marry for love than to take a wife as a sort of 
social stepladder. I’m not going in for that kind of 
marriage. And I refuse to be made a cat’s-paw of 
any longer.” 

He left her, and went out of the room, and out of 
the house, cursing his circumstances, the Raths, par- 
ticularly Sir George Rath, baronet, and his own par- 
ents, whole-heartedly. But it did not occur to him 
to attempt to alter his circumstances and break away 
finally from his position as pensioner on his father’s 
bounty. He was sufficiently his mother’s son to ap- 
preciate the pleasant places and the easiest paths of 
life. 


X 


J OHNSON went with his tale of failure to Alieta 
as soon as he could conveniently get away. He 
had done what she had bidden him do, and the 
result was even as he had foretold. If Alieta should 
feel hurt at the affront to herself when he informed 
her of his non-success, she would be in a sense pre- 
pared for it. He had never held out any hope that 
his father would sanction their marriage; although 
he had not known before of his father’s private 
ambitions, he had always been aware of his peculiarly 
narrow racial prejudices. He had been a most bitter 
and bigoted opponent of closer union. He was one 
of those men who, too selfish to look ahead in a 
patriotic sense, see the present only in as far as it 
affects their own interests. The power of the Dutch 
in the Colony, a power which has its origin in the 
Dutchman’s love of the country of his adoption, was 
a constant exasperation to him. South Africa since 
the Union, as he was fond of proclaiming, was no 
place for Englishmen. But he continued to reside 
in the country, which furnished him with a handsome 
income, and a social status he would not have en- 
joyed elsewhere. It was the culminating bitterness 
in the cup when his only son proposed to take a wife 
from among the people he hated. 

Young Johnson motored up to Inchanga early one 
morning. Alieta was in the kitchen when he arrived, 
taking the fresh cream from the separator to add to 

93 


94 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 

that already ripening for the churn. He sought her 
there and stood beside her while she worked. She 
wore a blue overall over her dress, with the sleeves 
rolled up above her elbows, and she looked cool, and 
business-like, and — he noticed it — wonderfully indif- 
ferent. Beyond the bright smile she gave him when 
he kissed her, she displayed no particular emotion at 
sight of him, and gave no sign of anxiety or curi- 
osity to learn the result of his mission. He decided 
that she probably took it for granted that all was 
well. But in this he was mistaken. Alieta judged 
at once from his gloomy face that he had not suc- 
ceeded. But since he did not appear in any hurry 
to open the subject, she finished what she was doing, 
and then taking off her overall, led the way out to 
the stoep, and made him sit down beside her. When 
they were seated she held out her left hand. 

“Have you brought back my ring?” she said. 

He caught her hand and gripped it hard. 

“I brought back the ring,” he answered hoarsely. 
“And I did what you told me to, but — it was useless, 
Alieta.” 

“Poor boy !” she said softly. 

She scrutinised him closely, with her head tilted 
back, as he slipped her engagement ring on to its 
finger. She perfectly understood that he had come 
to her for sympathy; and she did sympathise with 
him, but rather as a woman sympathises with a dis- 
appointed child, than as one human being sharing 
trouble with another. 

“What is to be done now?” she asked. “We are 
rather where we were before.” 

“He threatens to cut me off,” he said, and scowled 
at the recollection of his interview with his father. 
“There’s a girl, you see, he would like me to marry; 
and he’s mad at this.” 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 95 


Alieta thought for a while. 

“ Why not let him cut you off ?” she said, as an out- 
come of her reflection. 

He stared at her. 

“Do you suppose we can live on air ?” he demanded, 
a mixture of scorn and derision in his voice at the 
impracticability of the question. 

Alieta laughed. 

“Of course not. IVe a very healthy appetite, and 
I like comfortable surroundings. But you could 
work, I imagine. ... You work for your father 
now. . . . Why not work for someone else?’’ 

“You are talking nonsense,” he exclaimed irrita- 
bly. “Working, as you call it, for my father is a 
very different matter from working for another man. 
I potter round now, and am my own master; my 
time is practically my own. ... I very much doubt 
that I could work for anyone else. I’ve had no 
business training.” 

“I see.” Alieta frowned. It was in her mind to 
say, “So you don’t think our love worth the making 
of the effort?” But she checked the impulse. “Then 
I suppose it only remains for me to release you from 
your engagement?” 

He turned on her with a passion that surprised 
her. She had made her offer in perfect sincerity. 
She had done what occurred to her the only thing to 
be done in the circumstances, — offered to free him 
from an obligation there appeared no possibility of 
his being able to fulfil, and he resented it as he mighf 
have had she been responsible for the raising of the 
barriers to their union. 

“I believe that’s what you want,” he cried, — “to 
chuck me. ... I’ve thought that once or twice 
lately. But I’m not going to be a consenting party. 
I can’t force you to marry me against your will, but 


96 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 

I’ll not release you voluntarily, Alieta. . . . Any- 
way, I think the suggestion is very ill-timed when a 
man is down on his luck.” 

“And I think your anger very foolish,” Alieta re- 
turned with dignity. “Perhaps when you are calmer 
you will explain what you intend to do, since you 
won’t defy your father openly by marrying me with- 
out his consent, and you won’t accept the freedom I 
felt it right to offer you. We can’t go on being en- 
gaged indefinitely, you know, until we both grow old. 
That would be fair on neither.” 

Nor did Alieta recall in thus arguing that until 
quite recently the indefiniteness of the engagement 
was what had appealed to her as so entirely satis- 
factory. 

“I’ve thought of that,” he said, and paused, regard- 
ing her with a lingering suspicion in his blue eyes. 
He did not feel sure of her, and he had an idea that 
she would take amiss the proposal he was about to 
make. He still retained her hand. He held it gripped 
in one of his ; with the other he caught her wrist and 
drew her closer to him. 

“I want you to marry me secretly,” he muttered. 

She started and pulled her hand sharply away. 

“I couldn’t,” she said. She got up and went to the 
rail of the stoep and stood there, looking unseeingly 
out across the garden. “I couldn’t do that,” she re- 
peated, with a blunt determination that warned him 
not to press her farther and so court a more decided 
failure. “You mustn’t ask me. . . . That sort of 
thing. . . . It ” 

She broke off abruptly in her speech and faced 
round slowly. 

“If we did that,” she said, “and your father ever 
discovered the truth, it would mean the end of all 
chance of happiness for you and for me.” 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 9 7 

He shrugged his shoulders impatiently. 

“There is no reason why he should discover it,” 
he argued. 

Alieta regarded him gravely. 

“It isn’t right,” she said. “There is a better way 
than that. ... Go and work for me. When you 
earn just enough to keep us, I will come to you.” 

He evaded this, and worked round to another 
point. 

“After all,” he said, without looking at her, examin- 
ing the toe of his boot minutely, aware that her eyes 
were on him while he spoke, “your people are 
wealthy. If the worst comes to the worst, and I 
have a split with my governor, your father could 
help us along a bit. . . . Why not ?” 

Alieta surveyed him coldly. 

“My father would never agree to a secret mar- 
riage,” she said. “And he has too great a respect 
for labour to keep me and a husband who could not 
provide for me by his own exertions.” 

He looked up sharply. 

“You don’t help a fellow,” he exclaimed angrily. 

. . . “You won’t do your share.” 

“It is you who refuse to do your share,” she an- 
swered. “If your love is worth anything at all, 
surely it is worth a little self-denial? . . . Why 
should you wish to be supported by others? — you, 
who have health, and strength, and intelligence. I 
would rather live with you in two rooms which you 
paid for by your own labour than in a mansion pro- 
vided for us by your father. So long as you are 
dependent on the bounty of another you are under a 
continual obligation.” 

“I earn what I get from my father,” he returned 
sullenly. 


98 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 

“You don’t earn it. By your own admission you 
merely put in your time and amuse yourself.” 

“Well, hang it all! a man has more right to his- 
father’s money than anyone else.” 

“A man has only the right to what he earns,” she 
retorted. 

She returned to her chair, and, sitting down, slipped 
her hand in his. His aggrieved and keenly disap- 
pointed expression touched her. 

“My poor boy!” she said softly. “It is hard on 
you. . . . Your training is all against you. Don’t 
look so worried, Harold. You’ll win, if you only 
make up your mind to try.” 

“But you won’t wait,” he protested. “It might be 
years. . . 

“If I knew you were working for me, I would 
wait,” she answered quietly. 

He looked at her gloomily. 

“You are the most obstinate woman I ever knew,” 
he said shortly. “Besides, I can’t wait years. I’ve 
not got that degree of patience. I want you now. 

. . . And I can’t see why the devil we shouldn’t 
marry. ... You are unreasonable, Alieta.” 

Alieta laughed. 

“There is the bell for breakfast,” she exclaimed, 
rising. “When you have broken your fast you’ll feel 
better.” She smoothed the hair back from his fore- 
head and kissed him. “You have got to grow up 
some time,” she said. “I want to see you learn to 
walk alone.” 

It did not help to soothe Johnson’s ruffled temper 
when he sat down to breakfast in the eet-kamer with 
his prospective father-in-law in courduroy trousers 
and veldschoens, just as he came from the lands 
where he worked as hard as any of his servants, and 
his prospective mother-in-law in a big white apron, 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 99 


which she did not remove since she would need it 
again as soon as the meal was finished. He had 
taken these trifles once as a matter of course; this 
morning, with the memory of his father’s recent 
sneers and his mother’s undisguised dismay at his 
contemplated union inflaming his mind, he found 
himself drawing comparisons between this home, 
which was all his future wife had ever known, and 
the elegant surroundings he was accustomed to. It 
occurred to him as preposterous that wealthy people 
should live in such humble style. In his opinion it 
betrayed a want of self-respect. His irritation was 
possibly aggravated by the reflection that to such 
people as these, who were not ashamed to work, but 
rather looked with scorn upon the idlers, a man who 
shied at the thought of earning his own bread would 
be incomprehensible. They would have no time for 
him. 

He shook hands with the old people, and sat down 
gloomily opposite Alieta. The old baas asked a bless- 
ing on the food, and his wife then ladled out the 
mealie porridge which the Hottentot maid set before 
her on the snowy cloth. 

“I kept the breakfast back ten minutes to give you 
time for a praatje,” she said to Johnson, and looked 
from his glum face to Alieta’s serenely unconcerned 
countenance with shrewd, understanding eyes. Per- 
haps she had made a mistake. Punctuality was a 
good rule; if she had not broken it to allow of that 
little talk she might have averted a quarrel. 

Alieta smiled at her mother. 

“If you had delayed it another five minutes, we 
should have come to blows,” she said. 

Johnson, who suffered from a weakness, shared by 
many fair people, of readily changing colour, flushed 
slightly. He both understood and spoke Dutch flu- 


100 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


ently, which was one of the reasons why the Van 
der Vyvers approved of him. 

“The blows would have come all from one side,” 
he said. “I’m not sure there weren’t a few; I’m 
feeling bruised.” 

“Do I hit so hard, poor boy?” Alieta asked softly, 
a faint smile lurking in the depths of her eyes. She 
pushed the cream jug across the table to him, knowing 
his partiality. “Make the most of your opportuni- 
ties,” she added. “When we are married I shall for- 
bid cream.” 

Van der Vyver glanced down the table at the young 
man, and his heavy grey moustache twitched hu- 
mourously. 

“In the courting days a man feels he is born to 
rule,” he observed; “when he is married he knows 
he isn’t.” 

“Ach! some of you never know it,” Mrs. Van der 
Vyver returned; “it is we women who know.” 

“Are you not afraid ?” Alieta asked the young man. 
He laughed at her. 

“I give my mare her head,” he said, “but I con- 
trol the rein.” 

Alieta did not appear to resent the analogy, what- 
ever she thought, but her mother surveyed the speaker 
with an expression not easy to read. 

“You are one of those who will never know,” she 
said drily. “When you think you are controlling 
your mare, she is doubtless picking her own way.” 

“Have a chop?” suggested Van der Vyver sympa- 
thetically, serving from a huge pile of mutton chops, 
brown and frizzling on the dish before him. “Much 
good meat makes a man strong to face his difficul- 
ties. The path of life is simple only to the solitary 
wayfarer; when a man takes a partner it becomes 
immediately complicated. The mind of a woman 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS ioi 


once arrived at a decision is like the prickly pear 
hedge; one may, by patient labour and perseverance, 
cut a way through, but there is no possibility of forc- 
ing a passage. . . . The Book teaches that it is not 
good for man to live alone, — but it is less difficult. 
That is so.” 

The old man’s eyes twinkled as he looked at the 
listening, scornful countenance of the woman who 
had ruled his home and himself for over thirty years, 
and who, to quote popular opinion, had ever proved 
the better man when it came to a conflict of wills; 
then he handed the plate with two frizzling chops on 
it to Johnson. 

“Many a man weds what he believes to be pliable 
because it is soft, feminine flesh; but appearances 
are deceptive. It is the sour-faced women that are 
the easiest to lead. As the saying is , — Still water , 
diepe gronde onder, draai de duivel rond.” 

Which, being literally translated, reads, — “Still 
water, deep ground under, turn the devil round.” 


XI 


N O seed is ever sown without being productive 
of its result. If Harold Johnson had not 
actually prejudiced his father against Heck- 
raft, he had set his thoughts working round the prob- 
lem of a double interest until he began to feel that 
there had been disloyalty towards himself, and a cer- 
tain ingratitude in his manager’s haste to set up an 
opposing interest. 

As an outcome of this, Heckraft received a sum- 
mons to wait upon his employer in Durban. It was 
not alone the fact that Heckraft sought to work in 
opposition — Johnson senior was fair minded enough 
to see that it was Heckraft or another — that actuated 
him in insisting on a personal interview with his 
manager; his son’s disquieting confidence weighed 
yet more heavily with him in commanding the inter- 
view, at which he hoped to learn more than he could 
expect to from the latter, whom he would not allow 
himself to question. 

Heckraft, surprised on receiving the letter, passed 
it across the breakfast-table to Gommet. Gommet 
read it and returned it with a grunt. 

“Just as I said,” he commented. “They want to 
get rid of you.” 

“But why?” Heckraft asked. 

“Jealousy.” 

“Oh, rot! Johnson knows that our interest can 
never clash with his.” 


102 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 103 

Gommet busied himself with spreading butter 
thickly on his bread, and smiled covertly. 

‘Til let you into the know,” he said, after a pause; 
“it’s time. ... You are cutting the puppy out.” 

Heckraft’s face flamed. 

“Damn it all!’ he exclaimed indignantly. “Can’t a 
man be decent to a woman without being under sus- 
picion of courting her? I have an immense respect 
for Miss Van der Vyver.” 

“So have I,” the engineer returned equably. 
“Which is one of the reasons why I am glad to see 
that she appreciates your ‘decency.’ ” 

“Do you mean to insinuate that I’m flirting with 
her?” Anthony Heckraft demanded with heat. 

Gommet’s smile deepened. 

“No,” he replied calmly. “Flirting is attention 
without intention. I should say you were quite seri- 
ous — and so is she.” 

“Then you think ” Heckraft rose from his 

seat, and stood with one hand on the back of his 
chair, staring blankly at his companion — “you think 
that I’m deliberately making love to a girl whose 
affections are already engaged? That’s as good as 
calling me a damned scoundrel.” 

Gommet raised his eyes and regarded the speaker 
unconcernedly. 

“You mistake me,” he replied coolly. “I think that 
you are unconsciously making a girl love you whose 
affections have never been touched before. . . . 
She’s engaged to Harold Johnson, and she cares for 
you. A child could see that — that’s why the puppy 
has discovered it. I don’t know how old Johnson 
will feel in the matter, but I fancy he’ll be obliged 
to you.” 

Heckraft had occasion to remember Gommet’s talk 
when later he journeyed down to Durban in obedi- 


io 4 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 

ence to orders, and met his employer face to face. 
The ostensible reason for the interview was the pur- 
chase of Nooitgedacht, and how the conflicting in- 
terest would affect their relations; but it was mani- 
fest from the outset that that was not why Johnson, 
senior, had sent for him; plainly, his greatest con- 
cern was his son’s liaison, as he was pleased to term 
it, with Alieta Van der Vyver. He had made outside 
inquiries, and had elicited from the same source that 
had poisoned Harold Johnson’s mind and inflamed 
his jealousy against Heckraft, that the new manager 
at Drummond was opposing his son’s interest, as well 
as his own. The latter piece of information was far 
from displeasing to him, but, in view of his son’s 
wealth, he did not seriously regard Heckraft as a 
formidable rival for the Dutch girl’s favour. When 
it came to a choice between two men, his own mean 
experience had taught him that mercenary advan- 
tages weighed in the balance heavily against less 
worldly attractions. 

He sounded Heckraft in regard to his son’s par- 
tiality, and finding the latter uncommunicative, be- 
came brutally frank in the matter of his unalterable 
objection to the ill-assorted union. 

“I have no personal objection to the lady,” he 
wound up diplomatically, in consideration of his 
listener’s supposed admiration. “I have no know- 
ledge of her; but I have other plans for my son. If 
he chooses to make a fool of himself, I can’t prevent 
it, but I can and will disinherit him.” 

Heckraft listened in polite silence. 

“It is scarcely my affair,” he said at the finish. 
“Neither Mr. Johnson nor Miss Van der Vyver have 
confided in me.” 

“Quite so. Yet I believe I am not mistaken in 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 105 


supposing you to be on very friendly terms with Miss 
Van der Vyver?” 

Heckraft changed colour. 

“I esteem it a privilege to call myself her friend,” 
he replied stiffly. 

Mr. Johnson looked immeasurably relieved. 

“She is fortunate,” he returned courteously, and 
added with a quick change of subject and manner: 
“Well, I am glad to have had this talk with you, 
Heckraft. I quite understand that my interests will 
not suffer on account of your venture. I am obliged 
to you for being so frank with me. If I can be of 
assistance to you in any way in the near future, I 
shall be glad. I would not wish to stand in the light 
of your getting on. It is gratifying to know that 
you like Drummond sufficiently to wish to settle 
there.” 

“Now, what the devil!” said Heckraft to himself, 
when he stood in the sunny street outside Johnson’s 
office, “did he mean?” 

And, as if in answer to his puzzled reflection, Gom- 
met’s belief, expressed at the breakfast-table, that it 
would be agreeable to the older Johnson that he 
should cut out the son in Miss Van der Vyver’s re- 
gard flashed into his mind. Mr. Johnson had in a 
roundabout way endeavoured to convey to him that 
such a course would not meet with his disfavour, but 
might gain for him future substantial advantages. 
The interview had amounted to a subtle bribe to 
enter into competition with Harold Johnson for the 
hand of Alieta Van der Vyver. 

Heckraft lunched at a hotel, and spent some hours 
seeing the town, which he had regretted not being 
able to do on the day of his arrival. He learnt that 
the Ariadne was in dock, and took the tram down to 
the wharf and went aboard her, 


10 6 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


The captain was ashore, but Walford did the hon- 
ours with an air of beatitude that seemed to call for 
other explanation than pleasure at the sight of a for- 
mer passenger. The explanation came later over the 
whisky in the cabin, in which he insisted on Heck- 
raft joining him. He had, Heckraft learnt, found 
Mollie Heathcote, and he drank her health, as he 
had done frequently since the discovery, with cheer- 
ful complacency, and an air of quiet self-gratulation. 

“I made inquiries,” he confided to his sympathetic 
listener, a smile in his blue eyes, “after I got home 
that trip. What Johnny said, that time I was yarn- 
ing about her, made me anxious to find things out. 
She was settled down in Gravesend, and I got the 
address and went to see her.” 

He chuckled, and gazed into his half empty glass 
with a reminiscent smile. 

“It was quite true what Johnny said; she never 
got my note, and the fainting was a put-up job. 
She’d an idea she’d pay me out for scaring her, — 
wanted to bring me to my knees, and I spoilt her 
game by keeping out of her way.” He chuckled 
again. “We had a good laugh over that,” he said. 
“But it wasn’t much of a laughing matter with either 
of us at the time.” 

“Well, all’s well that ends well,” was Heckraft’s 
original comment, as he met the steady gaze of the 
man whose “nerves” appeared to have undergone 
some miraculous cure. “When is it to be, old fel- 
low ?” 

Walford laughed aloud without a trace of bitter- 
ness. 

“She’s married,” he answered cheerfully, — “and 
got five kids. . . . Jolly little kids they are. But 
her temper’s developed, like her father’s. . . . And 
she’s fat . . . Eight years make a difference. . . . 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 107 


Funny old world, eh? . . . The man’s a fool who 
kicks against destiny; it’s as often as not a let off 
when fate appears to have played you a dirty trick.” 

Which sentiment recalled to Heckraft’s memory 
the once familiar, now half-forgotten lines: “Peu 
polie, pas jolie, tel etait Mladame Angot.” In eight 
years a woman may grow old, and a man philosophi- 
cal. The attraction of the flesh is short-lived. 

“Here’s to single blessedness!” cried the chief, and 
raising his glass, he drained the contents, and set it 
down again empty. “Don’t you get spliced, Heck- 
raft. . . . You’ll be a blithering ass, if you do. A 
man’s only a little god to a woman until he belongs 
to her.” 

“And yet the man’s incomplete without the 
woman,” Heckraft answered, and added musingly: 
“It must be good to come home to a welcome at the 
finish of the day.” 

“That’s just it,” Walford said, puffing at his pipe 
with lazy enjoyment. “There isn’t any welcome af- 
ter the honeymoon. I’ve not been married, but I 
know plenty of chaps who are; and I’ve heard many 
a man admit that, sitting opposite to his wife of an 
evening, and wishing himself elsewhere, he has asked 
himself the question : T wonder what the devil made 
me marry that ?’ ” 

“One man’s experience is not another’s,” Heck- 
raft replied dryly. 

His listener glanced across at him with a flicker 
of his heavy lids. 

“That’s tantamount -to an acknowledgment that 
you’re in love,” he said. “Well, I’m dashed sorry to 
hear it. The kindest thing I can wish you is that 
Providence will step in, as it did with me, and save 
you making a fool of yourself.” 

Heckraft found plenty of food for speculation on 


io8 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 

his journey back to Drummond. One man had in- 
sinuatingly put the thought of marriage into his mind, 
and two men had told him bluntly that he was in love. 

The latter statement he accepted; he knew it for 
an incontrovertible fact, had known it for some time, 
though he had not allowed himself to put it into 
words before, had persistently refused to dwell on it 
in his thoughts. Now, to the lowering of his self- 
esteem, he found himself not only dwelling on the 
idea, but seriously considering the ambiguous sug- 
gestions thrown out by his employer in their recent 
talk. Why should he not enter the field and fight 
openly for the woman he loved? If there were any 
grounds for Gommet’s stated belief that she cared 
for him, he had a greater right to her than Harold 
Johnson. 

Alone with Gommet in the evening, he told him 
just as much of the interview as he deemed advisable, 
keeping back everything in connection with Harold 
Johnson; a sudden accession of self-consciousness 
made the mere mention of the man’s name displeas- 
ing to him, so that it was a relief that Gommet in 
discussing him invariably referred to him as the 
puppy. 

“I told you,” Gommet said, when he had heard 
the gist of the interview, “that it was a bit of spite 
on the puppy’s part. He’s been stirring up his gov- 
ernor against you. You’d better keep your eyes 
wide; he’ll serve you any dirty trick that oppor- 
tunity offers. I know the breed. Well, I’m glad, 
anyway, that you made the position clear to the 
baas. We’re working in the open now.” 

He filled his pipe, and getting out the whisky 
bottle, settled himself in his chair near the open 
window. 

“Fetch the fiddle, Tony,” he said. “I’m like Saul. 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 109 


Talking of that beast rouses the devil in me. . . . 
My soul needs soothing.” 

Heckraft got out his violin, and while Gommet sat 
and listened and drank whisky, he filled the silence 
with sweet sounds. The scent of the wattles stole 
in from outside, and in the house of the station 
master a solitary light gleamed suddenly in the dusk. 
Above the hills the big fog moon, red, like a newly 
risen sun, shone dully upon the scene. 


XII 


I N soothing the soul of Gommet, Heckraft suc- 
ceeded unwittingly in stirring another soul into 
a tumult of unrest, — the soul of Alieta Van der 
Vyver. 

Alieta was driving back from the station, when 
the sound of the violin flooding the evening stillness 
arrested her attention. She had been away from 
home for a few days, and was returning in the buggy 
with Banini, the small Indian who had driven over 
to meet the train. As she drove past Gommet’ s house, 
hearing the strains of music, she stopped surprised. 
She had no knowledge of Heckraft’s gift. He had 
never played to her, nor spoken to her about music. 

Alieta passed the reins to Banini, and sat back in 
her seat and listened. Heckraft was playing an Arab 
dance ; and the barbaric music accorded well with the 
barbaric land, with the hot still night, with the pun- 
gent scent of the wattles, the dull gleam of the fog- 
rimmed moon, with the dark mystery of the hills, 
and the stirring of revolt and elemental passions that 
swayed Alieta’s awakening senses. She sat in an 
ecstasy of enjoyment, and drank in the sounds. 

It did not occur to her that she could be seen from 
the open window. Inside the room it was dark, save 
for the pale illumination of the moon, which fell 
wanly across the face of the player, showing it mask- 
like in the dimness as he bent over his instrument. 
Gommet, sitting well back in the shadow, watched 
the scene with curiosity. From where he sat Heck- 
no 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS in 


raft could command a view of the road, and Gommet 
was perfectly aware that he was conscious of Alieta’s 
presence, that he had heard her drive past, had seen 
her sudden halt, and now was observing her intently 
while he drew the bow across the strings. The very 
quality of his music had changed with her appear- 
ance ; he was playing to Alieta, to her only, though he 
was to all outward seeming oblivious of his audi- 
ence. 

Gommet sat rigid. In his heart he was calling the 
man a fool in that he did not lay aside his instrument 
and go forth and meet the girl. 

And then, unexpectedly, the girl took the initiative. 
She stepped from the buggy, and, walking back along 
the road, stood right in front of the window. 

Gommet turned his head towards Heckraft with a 
jerk of impatience; then he rose softly and stole out 
of the room. The music ceased abruptly. It broke, 
as it were, with a wail in the middle of a bar, and, 
putting the instrument down, Heckraft stepped 
through the window and joined Alieta in the shad- 
owed road. His greeting was commonplace. 

“How do you do, Miss Van der Vyver? It’s a 
jolly night, isn’t it?” he remarked. 

Alieta gave him her hand, and ignored his speech. 

“Oh! I never knew you could play like that,” she 
breathed. 

He laughed, a trifle self-consciously. She was add- 
ing to the tension which he had hoped to lessen with 
his bald little commonplace. 

“It’s my only parlour trick,” he answered lightly. 

“But you never told me,” she said, and there was 
reproach in her tones. “You never play to me.” 

“I didn’t know you’d care,” he said. 

She looked at him curiously, and disconcerted him 
with the hurt reflection: 


1 12 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


“I wonder if you mean just that?” 

“It’s probably my selfishness,” he returned eva- 
sively. “I like best to talk when I’m with you. The 
violin fills the blanks when Gommet and I find noth- 
ing to say to one another.” 

“You make me envious of Mr. Gommet,” Alieta 
said quietly. “I am going to exact a promise. . . . 
You must come to Odsani sometimes, and bring the 
violin. . . . Will you?” 

“I shall be very pleased,” he answered. 

Alieta moved a step nearer. Her eyes held his. 
By the light of the moon he saw, for all her com- 
posure, the struggle she was making for control, and 
the repressed excitement underlying her wonderful 
outward calm. 

“You never come to Odsani now,” she said. “Are 
your hours so very full that you have none to spare 
your friends?” 

“Well, I’ve been fairly busy,” he replied briefly, 
not wishing to hurt her, but fearful of meeting her 
at the moment on emotional ground. She was allow- 
ing the cloak of her reserve to fall from her, and he 
realised that, if he followed her example, if he loos- 
ened the rein of his passions, he would never stop 
until she was in possession of the secret which he 
could not determine to his satisfaction whether it 
would be for her good to know. He had got to think 
the thing out, to weigh all the chances ; for the pres- 
ent he could see matters only from a strictly personal 
point of view, — could realise only his great necessity, 
— his heart-hunger; it blinded him, he knew, to other 
factors in the case, factors which yet had to be taken 
into consideration. His very eagerness to set aside 
in his thoughts another man’s claim made him the 
more determined to refrain from precipitate action. 
If he trampled on his previous scruples, he would 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 113 


do so after calm reflection, not in an exalted moment 
of emotional stress. 

His answer affected Alieta more painfully than he 
suspected. She drew back within herself with a 
feeling of having been snubbed, little guessing that 
it was harder for the man, with his love self-con- 
fessed, to keep away from her than it was for her to 
miss seeing him, unconscious as yet that her restive 
desire for his company was based on a deeper feel- 
ing than friendly regard. 

“I know,” she said carelessly, moving away from 
him, and beginning to retrace her steps towards the 
waiting buggy. “You have a lot to attend to; and 
one doesn’t feel inclined to be sociable after a hard 
day. I don’t want to be selfish. I’ll give your 
promise back, and take my chance of hearing you 
play later, when the slack season comes.” 

Heckraft walked beside her. 

“Oh ! there isn’t such a press as all that,” he re- 
turned. “I’m afraid I’ve been guilty of posing in giv- 
ing you to imagine that I’m so terribly overworked. 
I’ll bring the fiddle out one evening soon, if you 
don’t think it will bore you.” 

Alieta made no response. She experienced no 
longer any pleasure in the prospect. He had spoilt 
things for her. His perfunctorily polite acceptance 
of her invitation had been prompted by no desire 
other than the wish to oblige her. She believed that 
he would not voluntarily have gone to Odsani, and 
regretted having exacted the half-hearted promise. 
But she had been carried away by his music, oddly 
stirred and disturbed; her senses had been rioting in 
a sweet excess, till brought back to the practical level 
of everyday life by Heckraft’s quietly aloof manner. 

She took her seat in the buggy, and Banini sur- 
rendered the reins. It occurred to Heckraft that her 


1 14 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


escort was insufficient considering the loneliness of 
the road. 

“Is that all they sent to meet you?” he asked, with 
a glance at the impassive countenance of Banini. 

Alieta laughed softly at the disparagement in his 
tone. 

“He’s a very faithful attendant,” she said. 

But Heckraft was not satisfied. 

“I envy you the drive,” he remarked, looking ahead 
along the dimly lit road. “It’s a perfect night. I 
wish you’d let me drive you. I should enjoy the 
walk home. . . . May I ?” 

“No.” Alieta gave him her hand in farewell. “I 
quite appreciate your reason for suggesting it,” she 
said with a touch of sarcasm which he failed to under- 
stand; “but there isn’t the slightest need. And we 
should be uncomfortably crowded. Good night, Mr. 
Heckraft. I’m sorry I interrupted the concert.” 

She drove on without waiting for his response, and 
Heckraft, standing in the road and looking after her, 
was puzzled to account for her manner. He realised, 
without at all understanding the cause, that it had 
been actuated by a feeling of resentment towards 
himself. 

He did not return to the house. Dissatisfied in 
mind alike with the result of the interview and the 
thought of the lonely drive which Alieta had refused 
to allow him to companion, he went to the stables, 
and, saddling his horse, followed the buggy at a dis- 
tance to the gates of Odsani, and then rode back in 
the moonlight, a prey to conflicting thoughts, in which 
a doubt as to whether Alieta did in reality return 
his love became so insistent that it dwarfed every 
other consideration, filling the most prominent place 
in his mind. If Gommet were wrong in his surmise, 
if he himself had been mistaken, deluded by Gom- 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 115 


met’s confidence, and his own eagerness to read in 
her slightest kindness a response to his steadily grow- 
ing regard, his future course was as simple as it was 
difficult to follow; he must leave Alieta undisturbed, 
and stifle his newly risen, and speedily disappointed, 
hopes as best he could. It was, after all, the more 
honourable course. To steal another man’s prize was 
not playing the game. . . . 

And yet he knew, as he pursued his way gloomily 
along the winding road between the wattles, that* 
had the prize been his for the taking, he would not 
have hesitated long. 


XIII 


D URING the weeks which followed his en- 
counter with Alieta, Heckraft was tormented 
with a spirit of increasing unrest. He worked 
hard and late for the purpose of distracting his 
thoughts, and, not so much because Gommet occa- 
sionally spoke of Alieta, but rather on account of a 
fear he entertained that he might open the subject 
when they were together, he avoided Gommet’s so- 
ciety. In the evenings, after work, he rode over to 
Nooitgedacht, and he spent his Sundays riding in the 
veld. 

Gommet, who hitherto had passed his Sundays 
drinking whisky, now put in the day of rest on his 
newly acquired farm, to the benefit of his health and 
the saving of his pocket. He would have liked to 
have had his partner with him on these occasions, 
but, being under the impression that Heckraft was 
proceeding with his wooing, he maintained a discreet 
silence, and busied himself with plans for the erection 
of a couple of roomy mud and wattle huts, which he 
intended for his own occupation when Heckraft 
should bring home a mistress for the comfortable 
little bungalow at Nooitgedacht. 

It was during one of his Sunday rides in search of 
distraction, when Gommet imagined him to be more 
profitably engaged, that Heckraft met with a very 
unpleasant adventure. He had lunched at Botha’s 
Hill, and was returning in the afternoon at a leis- 
116 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS n 7 

urely pace across the veld, when a korhaan rose up 
screaming from the grass not a yard in front of his 
horse, flew for a short distance, uttering its shrill, 
harsh note at intervals, and alighted again, well 
within range had a man been carrying a gun. It is 
a peculiarity of this particular bird that it invariably 
gives the sportsman a clue to its hiding place, though 
it not infrequently spoils his aim by its sudden, dis- 
cordant cry. The horse, thoroughly startled, shied 
violently, and bolted, getting completely out of hand. 
Aware of the pitfalls in the veld, but unable to avoid 
them, Heckraft trusted to the horse and his luck. It 
ended in the animal putting its foot in a meerkat’s 
hole and coming down with its rider heavily. Heck- 
raft struck his head in falling, and sustained a slight 
concussion. When he came to himself, and sat up, 
struggling to recall what had happened, the sun was 
sloping to the westward, and, save for himself, there 
was nothing living in sight. The horse had disap- 
peared, and he found himself, dizzy and shaken, 
alone and utterly lost among the countless hills. 

With the feeling that he must find his way some- 
how before night fell, he rose and walked forward, 
trying to guide himself by the position of the sun in 
the heavens, and taking note, as far as it was pos- 
sible where each hill resembled its neighbour in a 
seemingly endless succession, of the nature of the 
land. 

After wearily trudging for some miles, with a split- 
ting headache, under a pitiless blue sky from which 
the fierce afternoon sun shone down relentlessly with 
never a cloud to soften the glare, he came to a halt 
and sat down to rest on a convenient boulder beside 
a guarrie bush. His hat was gone, lost in his horse’s 
wild flight, and he had discarded his coat as too hot 
to walk in, and too heavy to carry. It struck him 


n8 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 

now that he had been foolish to leave the coat be- 
hind. It was quite possible that he would be be- 
nighted, and it was chilly in the evenings when the 
fog gathered in the valley and the dew fell. Many 
a man had contracted fever that way. 

He rested his arms on his knees, and fell to think- 
ing. Never in his life had he felt so utterly alone. 
The silence was oppressive. Nothing moved in the 
sultry stillness; there was no sound or sight of a 
living thing, other than his own motionless figure 
seated on the boulder. Heckraft had never before 
experienced such solitariness. The silence appealed 
to him like something sentient that listens and waits. 

He had not recovered sufficiently from his fall to 
be able to gauge his whereabouts, but it occurred to 
him that possibly the horse would return to its stable, 
in which case Gommet would doubtless institute a 
search, though a search under such conditions might 
well prove fruitless. There was nothing for it but 
to push forward, and trust to striking the road event- 
ually, or a homestead of sorts on the veld. He had 
no stomach for being benighted among the hills. 

When he was rested he got up and struggled on. 
After what seemed to him in his weakened condition 
an interminable time, but was in reality little more 
than an hour’s steady march, he found himself on 
the brow of one of the hills, and, pausing, looked 
about him in the evening light. If he had hoped to 
discover a road by his climb, or some familiar land- 
mark, he was disappointed. The prospect revealed 
nothing but waste places, vast tracts of uncultivated, 
undulating land. It recalled to his mind the allegory 
of the Temptation, when the Lord was taken up into 
an exceeding high mountain and shown all the cities 
of the world. He looked away into immeasurable 
distance, a distance that melted into blue haze which 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 119 

softened the flat tableland effect of the far-away hills 
where they merged with the sky and became one 
with it, cloudlike shadow land against a melting back- 
ground of blue. Hills stretched before and around 
him, hills undulating and receding like ocean waves, 
broken, irregular land, with never a sign of a habi- 
tation, only the blue atmospheric haze hanging over 
it like a veil, and the wonderful colouring, the sharp 
contrast of light and shade seen only in lands where 
the sun has made its home. 

Heckraft found shelter under a boulder and sat 
down. 

“I’ve reached the limit,” he muttered. “I can go 
no further.” 

He pulled a few handfuls of grass and scrub, and 
made himself a pillow, and so lay back and rested, 
keeping a watchful eye on the prospect, ready to hail 
if anyone came within sight. The sun topped the brow 
of the hill and dipped behind it, and the shadows 
began to lengthen and deepen in the valley. Heck- 
raft recalled tales he had heard of men being lost 
in the veld for days, even weeks. One man, he had 
been told, had walked in a circle for nine weeks, 
brute instinct keeping him from wandering away 
from the water which was his sole hope of life. He 
had existed on roots, till chance wayfarers had found 
him eventually out of his mind, a wild man who fled 
from his kind, and took shelter in an ant-bear’s hole 
in the veld. He had never doubted the tale, which 
indeed he knew to be well authenticated, but alone 
as he was now in that wonderful silence, with no clue 
to direct him to a possible road, with the knowledge 
that every step he took might be leading him further 
out of his way, he realised how easy it was to miss the 
trail. His horse had lost it for him when it got 
beyond his control, and he had increased the diffl- 


120 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


culty by starting out to recover it while his mind was 
still too dazed to work intelligently. He had got him- 
self into a worse plight than if he had remained 
where he fell. 

He was fully alive now to the fact that he would 
probably have to pass the night on the veld; and he 
made himself as comfortable as he could in the cir- 
cumstances, thankful that he had his pipe with him, 
and enough tobacco, if he used it sparingly, to last 
him several hours. 

The light was falling quickly, fading abruptly, as 
it does in Africa, from day into night. Looking 
about him in the falling dusk, Heckraft presently de- 
scried a figure moving with quick, irregular strides 
towards him. He took the figure at first sight to be 
that of a native, and, springing up, hailed him loudly. 
The coloured man, at any rate, would be able to 
guide him to some place ; and shelter even in a Kaffir 
hut, he opined in his beautiful ignorance of Kaffir 
interiors, would serve for the night. 

He shouted again. If the traveller heard him, he 
made no sign, but came on with his strange, swing- 
ing stride, which changed every now and again to a 
feeble halting gait, half-shuffle, as though some ob- 
stacle impeded his progress. He walked with his chin 
sunk on his breast, and his hands clasped in front of 
him. As he came nearer, Heckraft’s expression 
changed from interest to amazement. The man was 
white, but so ragged and unkempt, with a wild mat 
of dark hair straggling over his face and shading his 
eyes, that it took more than a cursory glance to dis- 
cover the European beneath the disguise of sun- 
bronzed, dirty skin, and tangled beard. He was bare- 
footed, and about his wrists, Heckraft observed, and, 
observing, at once suspected foul play of which this 
sorry looking object had been the victim, was bound 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 121 


a thick rope, one end of which trailed along the 
ground, and occasionally entangled itself in his feet. 

“Hallo !” Heckraft called out reassuringly, as soon 
as the man came within speaking range. “What’s 
happened ?” 

In the silence which followed his question, for the 
newcomer made no response, a queer chilled feeling 
crept over him. Something in the expression of the 
fierce, restless eyes, glaring out from under the mat- 
ted thatch of hair, cunning with the cunning of an 
animal but entirely lacking in intelligence, warned 
him that he was face to face with a lunatic. What 
had been a sufficiently uncomfortable position be- 
fore the advent of this uncouth object was rendered 
by the intrusion highly disturbing and dangerous. 
Heckraft had not the least idea how to cope with a 
madman; and the person confronting him, motion- 
less, save for the restless eyes which never wavered 
far from the other’s face, was a big, powerfully built 
man who, if it came to a struggle, must inevitably 
win the day. And the bound wrists, as Heckraft 
now saw, were only a part of the make believe in the 
lunatic’s imaginary world ; the rope hung loosely upon 
the bony wrists, wound about them doubtless by the 
man himself. He could, if he wished to, free his 
hands in a moment. It was not reassuring with night 
coming on to find oneself on the veld alone with a 
lunatic. 

“Good evening,” Heckraft said, embarrassed by the 
persistent stare of the strange eyes, and their owner’s 
equally persistent silence. “I am a little out of my 
reckoning. Could you set me in the right direction 
for Inchanga?” 

His companion could not have paid less attention 
if he had been stone deaf. He made no sign that 
he heard the question. It occurred to Heckraft that 


/ 


122 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 

possibly, if he heard the words, they conveyed no 
meaning to him. He tried to recall some of the 
Dutch phrases which Alieta had taught him, but could 
think of nothing that would fit the circumstances, 
and, after a tentative, “Goen daag, Mynheer. Waar 
gaan jij ?” which met with no further response than 
his English had done, he gave it up as hopeless. 
When a white man in South Africa responds to 
neither Dutch nor English it is reasonable to con- 
clude that it is because he will not, or otherwise that 
he cannot hear. 

Heckraft started to walk, unmindful, in the dis- 
turbed state of his feelings, of his former fatigue. 
He must shake off this weird silent creature; to pass 
the night in such company was an unendurable 
thought. But as he walked the tall, gaunt figure 
kept pace with him, never speaking, keeping shoulder 
to shoulder with a gregarious instinct purely animal, 
and, for all that he never turned his head, watching 
him stealthily, Heckraft felt, every inch of the way. 
Finding that he could not thus rid himself of his 
uncomfortable companion, he made a right about 
turn and started walking in the opposite direction, 
with, however, the same result. His odd companion 
wheeled about also, and accompanied him as before 
like his shadow, the route that was travelled seem-» 
ingly being of no importance to him. 

Accepting the inevitable, and tired out, Heckraft 
flung himself down on the ground. He could go no 
further. If this strange being with the clouded mind 
and limpet-like tendency were set in his purpose to 
remain beside him, he could do nothing, save pass the 
night in a wakeful vigilance, and so be prepared 
against attack. After all, it was possible that the 
man was harmless; he had shown no inclination 
towards violence so far. Had it not been for the 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 123 


furtive watchfulness of the wild eyes he would have 
felt reassured, but he believed that any unexpected 
movement on his part would be noted and possibly 
misconstrued. The poor wretch was doubtless dis- 
trustful, like himself, and prepared, as he was, for 
attack. He was half afraid to feel in his pocket for 
his tobacco pouch, but he could not keep awake all 
night without smoking, and he dared not sleep. 

The lunatic had seated himself opposite him, bolt 
upright. The tall figure was almost indistinguish- 
able now in the gathering darkness. Heckraft could 
dimly see an outline against the sky, and the roving 
whites of the prominent eyeballs in the dark vacant 
face which was turned ever in his direction. 

“Join me in a smoke?” he asked, more by way of 
explaining his action in going to his pocket than in 
courtesy or expectation of a response. 

There was no reply to the question, but when 
Heckraft produced the pouch and started to fill his 
pipe from it, a large, clawlike hand reached out and 
grabbed it, and, tearing the pouch in his eagerness 
to get at the contents, the creature snatched at the 
tobacco, and, thrusting it into his mouth, devoured it 
as an animal devours food. Heckraft, lighting his 
pipe for fear of losing the little he had secured for 
himself, watched by the flaring light of the match he 
held the disappearance of the precious weed he had 
been depending upon to solace him during his long 
vigil. The madman’s voracity, the horrible eager- 
ness of the face and the dirty, clutching fingers, re- 
pelled, even while it fascinated him. 

The match burnt down to his fingers, spluttered, and 
went out. The last thing he saw distinctly before 
the darkness closed in on them once more was the 
hungry glint in the fierce eyes, as their owner flung 
the empty pouch away from him, having no further 


124 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


use for it, and glared at the man who had produced 
it in a mute demand for more. Heckraft fully ex- 
pected that the pipe would be snatched from him, and 
it annoyed him to reflect that if such were the mad- 
man’s will he was powerless to resist him. 

But the odd creature made no attempt to molest his 
companion. He sat silent and observant, watching 
the friendly glow of the pipe until it burnt itself out, 
and the smoker was left sucking at the cold stem, 
gritting his teeth upon it to keep himself awake, 
while his eyelids drooped with weariness, and his 
flannel shirt became wet and sodden with the fog and 
the heavy dews. And so they sat, this ill-assorted 
pair, wakeful and silent throughout the long night. 


XIV 


T HAT night was to Heckraft as an actively 
realised nightmare. At first in his extreme 
physical fatigue he had thought it impossible 
to keep awake, but, sitting opposite this strange 
being, who bore the outer semblance of a man, and 
possessed the instincts of an animal, he knew that he 
could not sleep. Horror at being alone with some- 
thing so uncanny, something which he could not see 
in the darkness, for the night was the blackest he 
remembered to have ever experienced, but which he 
could distinctly hear breathing beside him, deep, 
heavy, animal breathing, and which occasionally 
stirred, as an animal stirs, shifting its position for 
its greater ease, kept him constantly on the alert. Had 
he closed his eyes sleep might have overtaken him, 
but in the circumstances he could not close them. 
He remained staring wildly into the darkness, until 
the black pall slowly lifted, and the sky, which had 
closed in upon the earth, as it were, gradually re- 
ceded, marking its boundary by a pale uncertain 
line. 

As soon as it was light enough to travel he rose, 
and his strange companion, who apparently had not 
slept either, and who seemed no whit fatigued by 
his long vigil, rose with him and accompanied him 
on his way. Heckraft was glad to stretch his 
cramped and stiffened muscles, and as he walked, 
and the mists lifted from the valley, rolling away 

125 


126 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


before the rays of the early sun, his wet clothes be- 
gan to dry and a grateful warmth stole through his 
aching limbs. The early day was wonderfully fair. 
Masses of purplish white clouds hung low towards 
the horizon in an otherwise unstained blue sky; the 
shadows of the past night still lingered on the hill- 
sides, reluctant to retreat before the newly risen sun 
which was just beginning to show above the tree 
tops. And in the clear air the more distant hills 
stood out like a long range of mountains against the 
sky. 

It seemed to Heckraft that they walked for hours, 
up one hill and down the next. He could not be 
certain whether the lunatic had any definite line of 
route in his clouded brain which his feet instinctively 
followed, but he realised that he was now unques- 
tionably taking the lead. Since he had neither in- 
stinct nor knowledge to guide himself, he followed 
mechanically, hoping, rather than expecting, that this 
poor demented human silence might find a way out. 

His hope strengthened after a while; the face of 
the land grew more familiar as they walked, and 
afar off he descried the wattle plantations lining the 
slopes of the hills. Twice he sat down to rest; and 
each time his weird guide followed his example, 
waiting with impassive unconcern for him to rise and 
resume the journey. Heckraft had grown accus- 
tomed to the silent creature’s presence. The horror 
of him which he had known during the night had 
worn off with the darkness, dissipated as much by 
the lunatic’s inoffensive manner as by the daylight 
which diminishes most terrors. The poor creature 
was after all but a harmless wanderer of the veld; 
his overnight alarm appeared disproportionate to him 
now. In an odd, inexplicable sense he felt that a 
bond of comradeship existed between him and his 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 127 


strange companion for all the unbroken silence of 
that weary march. Nevertheless it was with a feel- 
ing of deep relief that he came at last upon a point 
he recognised, from whence he could quite easily strike 
the road. In his eagerness he quickened his pace ; and 
now he took the lead, for the lunatic showed no dS- 
sire to make for the open road. He followed re- 
luctantly, trailing his rope behind him, determined, it 
would appear, upon one thing only, that of not being 
separated from his overnight companion. 

As they came within view of the road, Heckraft 
saw a sight which rejoiced his heart and made him 
realise for the first time how deadly tired he was. 
A motor was coming along in the distance, travelling 
at such a rate that, unless he hastened his footsteps, 
he recognised that it would pass before he gained the 
road. He pointed it out to his companion, and hur- 
ried forward, scarce noticing in his excitement that 
the poor demented being who had clung to him so 
pertinaciously hitherto no longer kept pace with him, 
but fell gradually behind, following him still, but at 
a distance which he allowed to slowly widen between 
them. 

The car, Heckcraft discovered as it drew nearer, 
was driven by Johnson, and the girl seated beside 
him, with a little woollen cap worn over her wayward 
curls, was none other than Alieta Van der Vyver. 
He hailed them loudly, and Johnson, looking round 
and seeing him, stopped the car and waited for him 
to come up. 

“Good Lord! it’s Heckraft,” he said, and leaned 
over the side of the car as Heckraft, panting from 
his late exertions, gained the road. “What on earth 
are you doing here? . . . and on foot?” 

Alieta, with her readier intuition, observing Heck- 
raft’s dishevelled appearance and his unmistakably 


128 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


exhausted condition, jumped to the correct conclusion. 

“It’s that brute of a horse,” she exclaimed. “You’ve 
been thrown?” 

He smiled at her. 

“All that happened yesterday afternoon,” he said. 

Alieta sprang down from the car and opened the 
door of the tonneau. 

“Get in,” she said. “We’ll drive you home.” 

“But,” Johnson remonstrated, “we’re going the 
other way.” . . . 

Alieta cut him short. 

“We have all the day before us,” she said in a 
tone that admitted of no contradiction. “And we 
are going first to Drummond.” 

“Oh! well, I suppose there’s nothing else for it.” 

Johnson looked sulky as he watched Alieta minis- 
tering to the manager’s comfort. He found himself 
wishing their start had been timed earlier, so that 
they had avoided this delay. If the man were such 
a fool as to get thrown, why shouldn’t he foot it?” 

“Who’s your seedy looking friend?” he asked, 
staring in the direction of the now retreating figure 
of the madman, whom Heckraft had almost for- 
gotten in the pleasure and relief of the meeting ; now 
recollecting, he looked round with sudden thought 
for his late companion. 

“It’s some poor chap who has lost his wits,” he 
explained. “He came across me last evening, and 
pretty nearly scared the wits out of me. He seems 
to have lost his power of speech also.” 

“Oh, that! That’s mad Hantz,” Alieta said, glanc- 
ing up. “He’s quite harmless, poor dear !” 

“Harmless!” Johnson emitted a short laugh. “They 
call every madman out here harmless until a tragedy 
occurs, then, when the harm is done, they lock him 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 129 

“Well, anyhow, Hantz isn’t likely to do much 
harm,” Alieta said, smiling. “His poor crooked 
brain harbours but one idea: he is looking for the 
devil to destroy him. It is a pity some of us saner 
folk haven’t the same ambition.” 

“It would have been a jolly awkward thing for 
Heckraft,” Johnson observed with a grin, “if Hantz 
had mistaken him for the object of his search. He’s 
a hefty fellow. I wouldn’t like to run foul of him. 
Get up, Alieta. I’m sure Heckraft isn’t so damaged 
that he can’t tuck the cover round his own knees.” 

Alieta flushed, faintly annoyed ; then, her eyes meet- 
ing Heckraft’s, she smiled. 

“You do look tired,” she said, and added over her 
shoulder for Johnson’s benefit: “All right, bear; I’m 
coming. Hand me your flask first.” 

Johnson complied ungraciously. 

“You’d better get in beside him, and hold his hand,” 
he said with disagreeable sarcasm. 

Again Alieta’s eyes sought Heckraft’s, and again 
she smiled. 

“I am tempted to,” she answered, and passed the 
flask to Heckraft, who accepted it gladly. “Refresh 
yourself with that,” she directed him. “There’s more 
in it than is good for Harold, and a man in rude 
health, as he is, ought not to carry a flask.” 

“In which case, how could he effectively rendefr 
first aid?” Johnson demanded in quick self-defence. 

“A fine lot of first aid you are rendering,” Alieta 
said. 

“Seeing you are doing all that, it would be waste 
of energy for me to hang over the other side of 
him,” her lover retorted acrimoniously. “Women 
make such a rotten fuss about trifles. . . . All right, 
Heckraft? . . . Then jump in, Alieta.” 

This time Alieta complied, and, half turning in her 


130 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


seat, conversed with Heckraft as they spun along. 
Johnson, to use his own expression, let the car rip. 
The time he was losing over this job had to be made 
up somehow; he had no intention of devoting a 
minute more than was necessary to any unwelcome 
third party. It was a stroke of ill-luck, he consid- 
ered, a bad start to his day, that Heckraft should have 
happened across their path. 

“How did you manage to come off the horse?” he 
asked, during a pause in Alieta’s flow of talk. 
“Thought you prided yourself you could sit a horse 
that bucked.” 

“I didn’t allow for holes in the veld when I made 
that boast,” Heckraft answered, with half contemptu- 
ous amusement at the injured tone in which the ques- 
tion was put. 

“Oh! came down with you, did he? . . . Your 
fault, then, and not the animal’s. . . . Slovenly 
riding, that.” 

Heckraft did not trouble to go deeper into the 
matter. He knew that Johnson was annoyed at 
having to turn back, that he could not conceal his 
annoyance. In a sense, even while feeling bitterly 
antagonistic towards him, he sympathised with the 
man. The antagonism had its root in the knowledge 
— a knowledge which, he imagined, would have been 
distasteful in any circumstances — of Johnson’s claim 
upon the girl they both loved. To hear him address 
her in his authoritative manner roused a demon of 
anger in him which he had the greatest difficulty to 
restrain. He admired tremendously the way in which 
Alieta dealt with his peevish moods. She was a 
woman possessing immense tact, he decided, and a 
large nature. 

“There isn’t any need for me to run you down 
the hill, is there?” Johnson inquired, when they 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 131 

reached the highest point of the road between the 
woods. “It’s not far after you turn the bend, and 
it’s a beastly climb up again.” 

“Nonsense, Harold!” Alieta expostulated. “We are 
going all the way.” 

But Heckraft insisted upon getting out. 

“This is nothing,” he assured her. “I can man- 
age this very well.” 

He shut the door of the tonneau, and came round 
to her side. Johnson, intent on losing no time, was 
already backing the car for the purpose of turning 
it in the confined space, and Heckraft had to watch 
his opportunity to take the hand Alieta held out to 
him. He had only time to press it, and utter a few 
words of thanks, before the car made a bound for- 
ward, and disappeared in a cloud of dust, leaving 
Heckraft inwardly fuming, as he turned his back 
upon the dust-cloud and continued his way down the 
hill. 

When he came opposite the sheds he caught sight 
of Gommet calmly pursuing his usual occupation. 
A wagon load of bark had come in and was being 
unloaded and run up to the loft in small trolleys. 
He dodged the trolleys, and went inside. It was evi- 
dent from Gommet’s unconcerned greeting that he 
had no suspicion of anything untoward having oc- 
curred. He had indeed put an altogether different 
construction on Heckraft’s absence, and he expressed 
not the least surprise on seeing him walk in. 

“Did the horse come back?” was Heckraft’s first 
question. 

It was Gommet’s first intimation that horse and 
rider had been separated. He evinced some show of 
astonishment at his partner’s words. As a matter 
of fact, the horse was then in its stable; but the 
Coolie in charge, who had found the animal waiting 


132 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


outside when he came to his work in the morning, 
had apparently considered the matter not worthy of 
reporting. 

“I’ve heard nothing about the horse,” Gommet an- 
swered. “Didn’t you ride him home?” 

“I haven’t seen him since he came down with me 
yesterday afternoon,” Heckraft replied, effectually 
rousing the engineer, who swung round and surveyed 
the speaker critically, a sympathetic interest in the 
look. 

“Then where in hell did you spend the night?” he 
demanded, a question which in ordinary circum- 
stances he would not have put to any man; but this 
explanation of the overnight absence altered the com- 
plexion of affairs. 

“On the veld,” Heckraft answered, and added, with 
a laugh which in Gommet’s ears did not ring true, — 
“in the company of a balmly person who, I under- 
stand, is searching for the devil. I haven’t slept a 
wink, old man, — daren’t close my eyes for sheer 
funk, — and I’m literally starving.” 

Gommet leant towards him across the engine he 
was overhauling, leaning with his hands on the span- 
ner, which he had been using, while they talked. 

“How did you get here?” he asked. 

“Johnson motored me to the top of the hill. I 
met him on the road.” 

“Anyone with him?” 

“Yes.” 

The engineer did not pursue his interrogations fur- 
ther; apparently he was satisfied. The dispirited 
tone of his compamion’s reply told him all he wanted 
to know. 

“You cut across, and let Rudgubadi feed you,” he 
counselled; “no machinery can keep going without 
fuel. Then tumble in between the sheets. I’ll see 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 133 


to things. Don’t you worry about your boys. I’ll 
put the fear of God into them, so that they’ll turn 
out a full day’s work without you bossing round. 
Get, man! And don’t waste time at the stables. 
I’ll inquire about that blasted horse. ... If you 
won’t give up riding him, I’ll hamstring him.” 

Heckraft rose from the stack of timber on which 
he had taken a seat, and turned to the opening. 

“Oh ! it wasn’t the horse’s fault this time,” he mut- 
tered. “Johnson will tell you. ... It was my slov- 
enly riding that was to blame.” 

He yawned heavily and, passing out into the sun- 
shine, crossed the road to Gommet’s house, walking 
with a dragging, weary gait, and bent, dejected 
shoulders. 


XV 


H ECKRAFT did not see Alieta for a long while 
after the morning meeting on the veld when 
she had been motoring with Johnson. He 
understood from Gommet that she was away from 
home. Gommet and he were both fairly busy, giving 
all that was left of the daylight after they finished 
work to the supervision of their joint property. The 
plantation was already started. The young trees were 
beginning to grow, as were also the weeds ; the 
ground required constant care and cultivation. 

To see Gommet riding round his young plantation 
was like watching a child with a new toy, in the keen 
enjoyment of his pleasure. He had taken a grip of 
things again, had discovered an interest in life; and 
it was not exactly surprising that he should feel a 
certain affection for the man who, their paths cross- 
ing at a critical juncture, had quickened the old, half- 
dead interests into new life. It was through Heck- 
raft’s hold on things, through the happy optimism 
of his nature, that this man with his shattered ideals 
and his disappointed hopes had discovered something 
fresh in life that made it still worth the having, still 
worth a fight. He had been slipping down the hill; 
now he was beginning to climb, and the exertion 
necessary to the effort was proving beneficial. 

The summer was over; the barking of the trees 
was practically finished, and the Coolies were busy 
cutting up the seasoned timber and cultivating the 
134 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 135 


land to allow the young trees to grow. It was, as 
Alieta had expressed it, the slack season. Heckraft 
bethought himself of her invitation to take his violin 
to Odsani and play to her; but since she was away 
from home there was no object in a visit, and when 
he learnt — again from Gommet, who appeared sur- 
prisingly conversant with Alieta’s movements — that 
she was back, he still hesitated. He waited to see 
her again, and receive from her more direct encour- 
agement before he felt emboldened to show himself 
at Odsani. 

And then unexpectedly a rush of events turned his 
thoughts into other channels, and love slipped into the 
background for a time to yield place to the exigency 
of a tragedy that made a special demand upon his 
sympathies, — the consummation of the tragedy of 
Gommet’s unhappy married life. 

The post brought Gommet a letter one morning, 
the contents of which had a very disturbing effect 
upon him. Epistles of a private nature were rare 
with the engineer; his meagre correspondence con- 
sisted for the greater part of business letters. He 
was standing talking with Heckraft on the stoep while 
they waited for breakfast when the post came in. 
It brought only the one letter, and as soon as the 
recipient took it and saw the writing he turned away 
and went into the house. Heckraft heard him go 
into his own room, and close and lock the door be- 
hind him. As he did not come out again, Heckraft 
breakfasted alone. He dawdled over the meal in the 
expectation of Gommet joining him, but when, hav- 
ing finished, the latter still did not appear, he picked 
up his hat from the chair where he had flung it upon 
entering, and was going out, when something 
prompted him to pay a visit first to Gommet’s room. 
He felt inexplicably worried on Gommet’s account, 


136 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


though he could not have explained, had he been 
questioned, the particular form his anxiety took; it 
was more a vague, unaccountable uneasiness than an 
actual dread of any definite happening. He tapped on 
the door of Gommet’s room. 

“Coming out, old man?” he called. “I’m just off.” 

There was no response. He shook the door- 
handle sharply, whereupon a voice from within an- 
swerdd, a voice so unlike Gommet’s that he scarcely 
recognised it. 

“For God’s sake, leave me alone for just five min- 
utes longer.” 

Heckraft was moving away when he suddenly ar- 
rested his steps and came back. On consideration 
it occurred to him that there was in the words, or 
it may have been in the tone in which they were 
uttered, a significance that sounded portentous. He 
drew quietly nearer and listened outside the door. 
A noise like the striking of a match was audible 
within the room, and was repeated twice. Gommet 
was presumedly setting fire to something. Whatever 
it was he burnt, he set his foot upon it and stamped 
on the charred remains. Then he crossed the room, 
and Heckraft heard him at the dressing-table, heard 
a drawer open and shut, followed by a sound with 
which he was sufficiently familiar to recognise it im- 
mediately, the sound of a razor being stropped. Why 
should a man who has finished his toilet require to 
sharpen his razor? 

Heckraft waited for nothing further. It did not 
weigh with him that his fears might prove ground- 
less, and his conduct therefore peculiarly offensive 
and difficult of explanation. He was determined to 
gain admittance to the room, and, since Gommet 
would not open the door, he set his knee and shoul- 
der against it and forced the lock. 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 137 

The scene which met his gaze justified his worst 
fears. Gommet faced him, his right hand still 
clutching the bloody razor, the crimson blood stream- 
ing from a wound in his throat, soaking his shirt and 
waistcoat, and dripping on to the floor. He had 
been startled in the act, and the razor had slipped 
in his nervous grasp and done its work ill. 

With a spring Heckraft was upon him, and they 
struggled until Gommet’s strength was exhausted for 
possession of the razor. When he had secured it, 
Heckraft slipped it into his pocket, and then in a 
business-like manner he proceeded to tear a sheet 
off the bed into strips and to hastily bandage the 
gaping wound. He realised that unless he staunched 
the blood somehow Gommet would die before he could 
fetch assistance. He was extraordinarily collected. 
Later, he knew that he had acted in automatic obe- 
dience to certain instincts that told him what was 
best to do in the circumstances. It was not until he 
had left Gommet lying on the bed, watched over by 
Rudgubadi, and Rudgubadi’s young nephew, Mam- 
bersad, that he realised how tremendous had been 
the strain on his nerves. He was shaking like a man 
sick with palsy. 

He hurried to the stable and seized his horse, which 
was ready saddled, waiting for him to ride to his 
work. The horse shied at the smell of blood, and 
he noticed for the first time that his clothes were 
stained with blood, Gommet’s as well as his own; for 
he had cut his hand badly in wresting the razor from 
the other’s grasp. He mounted and rode off at full 
gallop. 

The nearest doctor lived at Inchanga; there would 
be sufficient delay, even if he had the luck to find him 
in when he got there, before he could reach the scene 
of the tragedy. 


138 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


On the road he overtook Alieta, riding in the same 
direction. He passed her with only a salute, and 
thundered on; but Alieta had seen his tense face 
and the blood which had soaked through the hand- 
kerchief he had hastily wrapped about his hand be- 
fore starting, and, believing that he was injured, she 
touched her horse smartly with the whip, and rode 
hard until she came up with him. 

“What’s the matter?” she called to him against the 
wind that was stinging their faces as they thundered 
along the hard road. 

‘‘It’s Gommet,” he answered, without decreasing 
his pace. “I’m going for the doctor.” 

Alieta felt unaccountably relieved. 

“But you are hurt yourself,” she persisted. 
“There’s blood on your hand — and clothes.” 

“It’s mostly Gommet’s,” he said. 

“Then he is injured? . . . There has been an 
accident ?” 

She struck her horse with the whip again, and kept 
neck and neck with the other horse. 

“Yes,” he answered through his teeth, and turned 
his head suddenly to look at her. “You stick to that,” 
he said, “whatever happens.” 

“Is it serious?” she asked. 

He nodded. 

“I’m hoping I’ll find him alive when I get back.” 

Alieta allowed her horse to fall behind, and Heck- 
raft rode forward alone, too preoccupied to notice 
when she actually parted from him, but feeling un- 
consciously relieved at being no longer obliged to 
talk. The strain and excitement were telling on his 
nerves. He felt physically done. 

Fortunately the doctor was in when he drew rein 
before his house and flung himself from the saddle. 
A motor stood at the door; five minutes later and 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 139 


the doctor would have left on his rounds. Briefly 
Heckraft explained what had happened; and the 
doctor took his bag, and got into the waiting car, and 
drove straightway to the scene of what Heckraft per- 
sisted in calling an accident. Doctor Seely had heard 
of such accidents before. It was not an unknown 
thing for a man when he was shaving to let the razor 
slip and nearly decapitate himself. He reckoned that, 
if it were not a case for a coroner’s jury, it would 
be a matter of about four stitches, and end in con- 
stant anxiety and watchfulness on the part of the 
man’s friends to prevent a recurrence of the careless- 
ness. Usually in these cases the coroner’s jury was 
the simplest way out. 

When the medical man had started, Heckraft re- 
mounted his sweating, panting horse, and rode back 
at a more leisurely pace. Now that the urgency for 
action was past he felt strangely incapable of further 
effort. He sat his horse loosely, and let it choose its 
own pace, experiencing in his fear of what might have 
occurred during his absence a strong reluctance to 
return. It occurred to him as very possible that the 
doctor when he arrived would find that he was too 
late. 

When he got back the motor stood in front of the 
house, and Mambersad was squatting at the side of 
the road, in charge of a horse with a side-saddle on 
its back. Heckraft looked quickly at the horse and 
discovered that it was Alieta’s. What, he wondered, 
was Alieta doing there ? 

He flung the rein of his own horse to the urchin 
and went inside. No one was about. He listened 
for a while outside Gommet’s room, and then passed 
on and entered the kitchen. Rudgubadi was there, 
putting fresh logs on the fire. She turned as he en- 
tered, her dark, thin-featured, handsome face inscrut- 


i 4 o VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


able as the face of the Sphinx. Indian women are 
strangely reticent, and seldom betray emotion. Ex- 
perience told Heckraft that if the worst had hap- 
pened she would most probably turn to him the same 
impassive countenance. 

“How’s the sahib ?” he demanded. 

“The sahib sleeps,” she answered; and he knew 
that if the sahib were dead, or if he lay simply with 
his eyes closed, her answer would be the same. 

“Is the missis inside with the doctor sahib?” he 
asked. 

Rudgubadi lowered her eyelids so that the flicker 
of interest his question aroused should not betray it- 
self. Had not this missis with the white face and 
the hair that was as the colour of the mimosa blos- 
soms driven her from the room so that she might 
watch by the sahib alone? 

“That missis come when this sahib ride away,” 
she said in her slow, soft voice. “That missis stay.” 

Heckraft returned to the living-room to wait. He 
was curious to see Alieta. Why had she come? He 
hated to think of her all that time, before the doctor 
came, alone, watching beside the gruesome, blood- 
stained figure he had left lying on the bed. It was 
like Alieta to have done what she did. ... He tried 
to recall what he had said to her on the road, but 
his mind had been in a state of such chaos that that 
fragmentary conversation with her had left no clear 
impression. He hoped he had prepared her in a sense 
for what she had found. . . . Anyway, there was 
no use in thinking about that now; she was there; 
and he knew in his heart that he was glad. 

Her arrival, had he known it, had helped in the sav- 
ing of Gommet’s life. She had been able to prevent 
Gommet — which the Indians Heckraft had left on 
watch would never have been able to do — from tear- 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 141 

in g off the bandages that had been bound about his 
throat. She had taken command immediately on her 
arrival, and because she believed that the dark, im- 
passive faces of the servants disturbed their master, 
she sent them from the room, and remained alone 
to watch until the doctor came. 

She had behaved splendidly, the doctor confided 
later to Heckraft. He had never seen a woman dis- 
play greater nerve. She had been a tremendous help 
to him. He had stitched up the hole in Gommet’s 
throat, and pronounced him as likely, in the event 
of nothing unforeseen occurring, to do well. 

“And now tell me,” he said as he was preparing 
to leave, “what made him do it. . . . We’ll allow 
the accident, of course. We understand that. But 
what was the direct cause of the accident? Has he 
been depressed at all lately? ... or worried? Has 
he given you any intimation that he was likely to make 
an attempt on his life?” 

“No,” Heckraft answered. “On the contrary, he 
has been unusually cheerful, and engrossed with a 
new enterprise in which we are both interested. I 
know of nothing that could have worried him, — un- 
less he received bad news in a letter he got this morn- 
ing. The receipt of the letter I fancied at the time 
upset him.” 

“Who was the letter from?” the doctor inquired. 

Heckraft shook his head. 

“I didn’t see it. He carried it to his room, and 
I’ve reason to suppose destroyed it before — before the 
accident occurred.” 

“And you’ve no idea who his correspondent was?” 

“No. . . . That is, I don’t know ; but one may form 
an opinion. ... He has a wife somewhere.” 

The doctor knew Gommet’s story; he knew Mrs. 


142 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


Gommet, though he had no knowledge of her present 
whereabouts. Heckraft’s opinion coincided with his. 

“If Mrs. Gommet could be got at. . . he said. 

He examined the inside of his hat carefully as 
though he expected to find a clue to Mrs. Gommet’s 
address in the crown, and then put the hat deliberately 
on his head. 

“The worst of this kind of accident,” he remarked, 
“is that occasionally it is repeated. . . . He’ll need 
watching.” 

Then he took his bag and went out to the car. 

“I’ll look in again this evening,” he called to Heck- 
raft, who accompanied him out to the stoep. And, 
perhaps because Heckraft kept his hand behind him, 
or perhaps on account of the unusual nature of the 
morning’s doings, he forgot to attend to the hand 
which he had previously noticed was injured. 


XVI 


H ECKRAFT turned back into the living-room 
and came face to face with Alieta. The en- 
counter rushed upon him unexpectedly and 
left him with nothing to say. He had known, of 
course, that she was in the house, but he had not 
prepared his mind to meet her, and coming upon her 
thus suddenly beneath his own roof, as it were, caused 
him an extraordinary sense of embarrassment which 
he failed to hide with any degree of success. 

Alieta wore a riding skirt, but she had taken off 
her hat which gave her the appearance somehow of 
being at home. Whatever she felt she had a far 
greater air of ease than the man who, conscious only 
that a sequence of untoward circumstances had 
brought this woman whom he was striving to forget 
into the common routine of his daily life, into his 
home, realized the futility, the hopeless absurdity, of 
attempting to put her out of his thoughts. She was 
established in his heart as surely as the stars were 
fixed in their orbit, and he possessed no greater power 
to dislodge her than was his to displace the heavenly 
bodies. 

He came to a halt in the opening of the window 
and gazed at her helplessly; Alieta, grave, but per- 
fectly matter-of-fact, addressed him as though her 
presence there were quite an ordinary event calling 
for neither comment nor explanation. 

“I want to write a note,” she said, and looked about 
her for materials. 


143 


144 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


Heckraft silently provided a pen and note paper and 
watched her while she sat at the table and wrote. 
She folded her letter and addressed it, then, rising, 
she handed it to him. 

“Will you send that to Odsani for me?” she asked, 
and added: “It’s to explain that I’m staying here. 
I want some things. And I’ve asked them to send 
old Katje to help me. She knows quite a lot about 
nursing.” 

He advanced his left hand for the note. 

“I thought of sending to Durban or Maritzburg 
for trained nurses,” he said, and fidgeted with the 
envelope in his fingers. He felt infinitely relieved 
when she quashed the idea. 

“But the expense!” she expostulated. . . . “Be- 
sides, it isn’t necessary. All that Mr. Gommet needs 
Katje and I can do for him. I don’t think he’d thank 
you for your trained nurses.” 

“I’m sure he wouldn’t,” Heckraft answered. “But 
I wasn’t thinking of him.” 

Alieta looked at him fixedly. 

“In the veld we learn to wait upon ourselves and 
to help one another,” she said simply. ... “I suppose 
in England a woman wouldn’t walk into your house, 
if you were sick, and take charge of things?” 

He parried this. 

“No woman has done that much for me,” he an- 
swered, and thought what an admirable thing it would 
be if life were less complex, and humanity could fol- 
low its natural impulses instead of conforming to 
rule. 

Alieta smiled at him suddenly, and her smile was 
wondrously sweet. 

“Send the note off,” she said, “and tell somebody 
to see that Fleetfoot is made comfortable at the sta- 
bles. Then come back to me here, and let me dress 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 143 


your hand. I wonder the doctor didn’t attend to it.” 

“He meant to. . . . I suppose he forgot.” Heck- 
raft looked at the bloodstained handkerchief. “It’s 
just a cut,” he said. 

Then he went out again by the window, and Alieta 
fetched water and lint and bandages, of which the 
doctor had left a supply, and waited for his return. 
He was absent some while; the girl knew, without 
being informed, that he was seeing himself to the 
welfare of her horse; and she stood at the window 
and watched for him. As she had expected, he came 
from the direction of the stables. He was very apolo- 
getic when he entered, over the blood-stained hand- 
kerchief, which he removed himself, and the condi- 
tion of his clothes. But Alieta was not upset at the 
sight of blood; she had seen plenty of it that morn- 
ing. 

“This is the second time,” she remarked, “that I 
have acted for you in this capacity. You seem to be 
peculiarly unfortunate.” 

“Most people would disagree with you there. . . . 
I do myself,” he said. 

She flushed warmly at his words, and smilingly 
directed him to put his hand in the basin of cold 
water. She bathed the blood from it and dried it in 
a soft towel. 

“These are nasty cuts,” she said, and pressed the 
flesh together with her fingers. 

The touch of her cool hands sent the blood coursing 
madly through Heckraft’s veins. His emotions were 
so riotous that he could not trust himself to speak, 
could do nothing, save stare at her dumbly as she 
bent over her task, his eager eyes devouring her fair- 
ness with a devotion that unwittingly transmitted it- 
self to her subconsciousness. Embarrassed, without 
understanding the reason of her embarrassment, Alieta 


146 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


busied herself with strapping up the deep incisions 
made by the razor; her hands trembled slightly over 
their work, but she did not remove her gaze from 
what she was doing, save, perhaps, to note the quick- 
ened beating of the pulse in the strong brown wrist 
of the hand she held in a light, firm grasp. She was 
sensible of the emotional tension between them; her 
own rapidly beating heart called for other explana- 
tion than mere nervous excitement following on a 
succession of shocks such as she had experienced that 
morning. She understood vaguely that the physical 
contact necessary to her present ministration was 
strangely disturbing, and realised further that it was 
dangerous because the disturbance was sweet. 

Dismayed by what was revealed in this rapid analy- 
sis of her emotions, she turned from further self- 
revelation and gave her mind up completely to what 
she was doing. She was a moral coward; she knew 
it. She dared not face, dared not even admit the 
truth. So long as it was not put into words she could 
ignore it. . . . 

She bandaged his hand deftly, and stitched the band- 
age at the wrist, bending her head when she had 
finished to snap the cotton with her teeth. With her 
face so near to his hand, Heckraft had a mad impulse 
to seize and kiss her, but he restrained himself. Such 
an act, he felt, would be sheer folly, and might put 
her out of his reach for ever. He would wait a 
little longer and choose his time judiciously. Since 
his wooing must commence with weaning her from 
the allegiance of her former troth it would be un- 
wise to be precipitate; it might prejudice his cause. 
As things were, he felt, looking at her changing face, 
his case was not altogether hopeless. Gommet, and 
his own earlier instincts, had been right; she was not 
wholly indifferent. 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 147 

“That will serve/’ Alieta said, releasing his hand, 
but still not looking at him, “until the doctor comes 
again, when it would be as well to let him dress it 
properly.” 

“Thank you,” Heckraft answered quietly. “I 
wouldn’t let anyone touch that hand now.” 

“Ach ! you are foolish,” Alieta returned quickly. 

She gathered up the appliances she had brought 
with her, and was leaving the room when he stopped 
her to inquire whether he could be of any assistance. 
She assured him she needed no help. The doctor had 
given the patient something to calm him; he was 
drowsy, and seemed inclined to sleep. 

“Well,” Heckraft said, “if you want me I shall be 
only across the road at the sheds.” 

He went out, and remained away until the dinner 
hour, so that he was not present on Mrs. Van der 
Vyver’s arrival. He saw her arrive with old Katje, 
and Banini in the buggy, but he did not feel that his 
appearance would be welcome, or that it would help 
in any way at the interview between mother and 
daughter. He anticipated trouble between Alieta and 
her mother, but it was the daughter he backed to get 
her own way in the end. Alieta, once she had made 
up her mind, was not easily moved. 

Alieta anticipated trouble also; for which reason 
she met her mother on the stoep, and impressed upon 
her before allowing her to enter the necessity for 
quiet. The patient was sleeping; on no account must 
he be disturbed. 

Mrs. Van der Vyver looked fixedly at her daugh- 
ter. There was, despite the fact that the elder woman 
had never been as good-looking, a striking resemblance 
between them. And the resemblance was not only 
physical; they were both possessed of the same in- 
domitable will. During all the years of Alieta’s life 


148 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


her mother’s will had prevailed over hers ; but the turn 
of youth comes inevitably with the growth of the 
reasoning powers, and the realisation of strength; 
and on that day Alieta stepped into her kingdom, 
and asserted her right to think and act independently, 
to the confusion of maternal authority, and to the 
complete disruption of the old relationship, which, 
though neither had recognised it, had been straining 
thin for some time. The suddenness with which 
Alieta wrested her authority from her overwhelmed 
Mrs. Van der Vyver. She felt too bewildered and 
inadequate even to rebel. 

“It is not your place to nurse Mr. Gommet,” she 
protested. “It is his wife’s duty.” 

Alieta’s warm brown eyes looked steadily back into 
the speaker’s. 

“If I knew where to find his wife,” she returned, 
“I would fetch her. ... As things are, what can I 
do?” 

“They should take him to Maritzburg to the hos- 
pital,” Mrs. Van der Vyver said. 

“And that would mean dragging all this miserable 
affair into the papers,” the girl answered. “When 
we can prevent it, why serve a neighbour like that?” 

And then Mrs. Van der Vyver put her actual fear 
into words. 

“People will think evil of you,” she said. “They 
will say that you make an excuse of nursing Mr. 
Gommet for the sake of being near Mr. Heckraft.” 

Alieta flushed. This was a charge she had not fore- 
seen; its very unexpectedness made her wince. 

“I had not thought of that,” she replied, and hesi- 
tated, chafing inwardly because this view of things 
had such power to wound and distress her. Why 
should people imagine that? . . . Why, if others im- 
agined it, should not Mr. Heckraft himself place a 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 149 


similar construction on her action? And then sud- 
denly it was borne in upon her beyond question that 
Heckraft would not think thus, and with the guaran- 
tee of her conviction on this point it became a matter 
of less importance what the world in general thought. 

“Surely no one could be so foolish, or so mean 
spirited as that?” she said. 

“The folly lies with you,” Mrs. Van der Vyver re- 
torted, “in providing food for talk. The world has 
a wide mouth and a gluttonous capacity for such 
food; and when two constructions can be placed on 
one’s doings, the worse is sure to be chosen.” 

“If you think so meanly of human nature, why 
trouble about its opinion?” Alieta asked with an in- 
difference which exasperated her hearer. 

“We have got to live in the world,” was the sharp 
retort. 

“In a very small corner of it,” Alieta answered, 
smiling. “Who is there here to concern themselves 
about my doings? . . . The station master’s wife, 
and possibly the night clerk; the people at the farm 
yonder, and one or two Durban tradespeople who 
may happen to be staying at the hotel. ... I don’t 
think I need worry myself much about any of those.” 

“Harold won’t like it,” Mrs. Van der Vyver said. 

Alieta bit her lip. This was an unanswerable argu- 
ment: she was very well assured that Harold would 
strongly disapprove. 

“No,” she said. 

“Don’t you think you ought to consider his 
wishes ?” 

“No,” Alieta said again, and frowned impatiently. 
“If there were any good reason for objection on his 
part it would be different. He simply dislikes Mr. 
Gommet.” 

“He dislikes Mr. Heckraft more,” returned her 


150 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


mother. “When he hears of this he will be very 
angry.” 

“I shall not tell him,” Alieta replied quietly, and 
thereby, Mrs. Van der Vyver felt, imposed silence 
upon her as well. 

“I don’t like it,” she exclaimed irritably, realising 
that she had exhausted all her arguments and had 
failed in achieving her purpose in coming. “If Katje 
were a white woman it wouldn’t seem so extraordi- 
nary; but a Kaffir doesn’t count.” 

“Then stay yourself,” said Alieta, tired of the con- 
troversy, “and I will go home. But plainly one of 
us must be here.” 

Mrs. Van der Vyver threw out her hands in a ges- 
ture of despair. 

“You are outrageous,” she exclaimed. “Never since 
I went to Odsani a bride have I slept beneath another 
roof. . . ” 

And Alieta knew that she had effectually silenced 
her mother’s protests, but with the realisation of vic- 
tory came a sense, not of triumph, but of weariness. 
She was strangely disheartened, not so much by the 
opposition she had met with, as by the disquieting 
ideas which Mrs. Van der Vyver had instilled in her 
mind. Was she, she asked herself dispiritedly, in- 
fluenced by any other motive than that of disinterested 
kindness in doing this simple service for a neigh- 
bour in his need? . . . 

She was aware that she had acted in the first in- 
stance upon a generous impulse, but the reasons which 
moved her to persist in defying her mother’s wishes 
and public opinion were more complex, and therefore 
possibly less disingenuous. It was a sign of moral 
degeneracy that she dared not be perfectly frank 
with herself. 


XVII 


H ECKRAFT dined with Alieta, waited on by 
Mambersad whom Gommet and he joking- 
ly dubbed the Butler. Mambersad possessed 
large soft eyes like a girl’s, and slim delicate hands. 
He was vain, and his vanity expressed itself in the 
silver bangles with which he adorned his dark wrists. 
A white turban covered his black silky hair, and blue 
and white cotton knickers, and a tunic of the same, 
completed his attire. Alieta took Mambersad seri- 
ously ; and he waited upon her with the assiduous def- 
erence the Indian shows to the women of a superior 
race, a deference which in Africa certainly is largely 
superficial. 

During the meal Heckraft was quietly observant of 
Alieta. He had never sat at table with her before, 
and it surprised him that it should seem so altogether 
natural. He had sometimes tried to picture Alieta at 
the head of his table in the capacity of wife and daily 
companion ; now, realising one part of his dream, hav- 
ing her there in the flesh if not in the relationship he 
desired, he found it wonderfully pleasant and home- 
like. If the dream would only last, if there need be 
no awakening, how good it would be! . . . 

And the best moment of that altogether enjoyable 
meal was when Mambersad placed the coffee on the 
table and withdrew, closing the door softly behind 
him, leaving them in an intimate solitude that feared 
no interruption. 

151 


152 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


Alieta poured out the coffee. 

“Sugar?” she asked, and passed Heckraft his cup. 

“Smoke,” she said. “I know you would like to, 
and I enjoy the smell.” 

He lighted a cigarette. 

“I have a feeling,” said Alieta, sipping her coffee 
while she returned his steady gaze with shy, elusive 
eyes, “that in my desire to be useful I have been a 
little — indiscreet. . . . Does it strike you like that?” 

“No,” he answered, and felt an absurd irritation 
against Mrs. Van der Vyver, whom he suspected of 
implanting conventional ideas in her daughter’s mind. 

“But it might appear so to others,” Alieta persisted. 
She gazed at him with a strong appeal in her eyes 
as though desiring reassurance on the point she had 
raised. Heckraft felt a savage desire to strike any- 
one who could harbour so base an idea. 

“Assuredly not,” he returned with some eagerness. 
“It is a dear, womanly, human act, your coming. 
What on earth should I have done alone? ... You 
are not thinking of deserting us, are you?” 

“No,” Alieta answered, and fidgeted with the lid of 
the little coffee pot, keeping her eyes lowered. “I’m 
not thinking of deserting. But — I want you to do 
something that will make things easier for me.” 

He leant his arms on the table, and brought his 
face nearer hers. Alieta did not look up, and he 
noted appreciatively as he watched her closely how 
the soft colour came and went in her cheeks. 

“I’ll do anything for you,” he said earnestly. 

She drew a little quick breath which might have 
betokened relief, or any other emotion. 

“Then will you — do you mind getting a room at 
the hotel for the few days I am here?” 

He smiled. 

“Is that all? . . . Well, I suppose I’d need to do 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 153 

that, in any case. We haven’t any guest chamber. 
I’ve told Rudgubadi to prepare my room for you. I’m 
sorry we’ve nothing better to offer, but we are badly 
off for accommodation.” 

The blush in Alieta’s cheeks deepened. She was 
vexed with herself for having preferred her request 
since after all it was unnecessary; but Heckraft, ob- 
serving her embarrassment, fancied that he had not 
entirely understood. 

Would it suit you best,” he asked, “if I took my 
meals at the hotel?” 

“Oh, no!” Alieta looked up quickly. She was 
frankly distressed that he should make such a pro- 
posal. “I should be sorry if you did that.” 

“I should be sorrier,” he answered, and added with 
a whimsical smile which helped to restore her com- 
posure, “You have no idea what the cooking is like. 
But I would put up with that if it would help at all.” 

“It wouldn’t,” Alieta said. 

Heckraft rose from the table reluctantly. He was 
too busy to linger over the coffee, much as he would 
have liked to; but there was a lot to attend to with 
Gommet’s work as well as his own on his shoulders. 

“I suppose I shall have to write to Durban and 
inform Mr. Johnson of what has happened,” he re- 
marked. 

Alieta looked up sharply. 

“Do you think that necessary?” she asked, unable 
to conceal altogether her dislike of this suggestion. 

“Well ,” he said, and looked at her doubt- 

fully, catching vaguely the reflex of her dislike for 
doing what he felt in the circumstances he ought to 
do. “I don’t know. . . . What do you think?” 

“I think,” Alieta said slowly, “if you can manage 
single-handed, it would perhaps be advisable — not to 
be in any haste. The fewer people who know of this, 


154 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


the better. It isn’t as though it were really serious. 
Mr. Gommet will be up and about again before long.” 

This unlooked for objection on her part gave Heck- 
raft food for thought. It was plain that she did not 
want Harold Johnson to hear of the accident, and the 
inference, as Heckraft read it, was that she had no 
desire for him to come up. He felt extraordinarily 
pleased at this, and being in the humour to catch at 
anything that conveyed the smallest encouragement 
of his rapidly growing hopes, he put an entirely wrong 
construction on her objection. 

“1 can manage all right,” he said. “And after all, 
as you say, why should anyone beside ourselves and 
the doctor know the cause of Gommet’s indisposi- 
tion? I’ll wait, as you suggest. If there should be 
any reason to write later. . . . Well, it can always be 
done.” 

Heckraft went to his work in an exalted frame of 
mind. He felt that he and Alieta shared a secret. 
Whether he was right or wrong in yielding to her 
wish to suppress the news of Gommet’s disablement 
troubled him not at all. It was her wish, that was 
sufficient for him. That the wish fell in with his 
own views added to his pleasure, if not to his inten- 
tion to accede to it. He knew that anything Alieta 
asked of him, even if distasteful to himself, he would 
do. Her desires were his laws. 

When he came in at the tea hour Alieta was in the 
sick-room. He waited for her to join him, feeling 
an odd reluctance to sit down to table alone. Mam- 
bersad brought in the tea, and placed a savoury ome- 
let, in the cooking of which Rudgubadi excelled, on 
the table, and gravely informed him of the fact that 
the food awaited his consumption. He answered 
briefly that he was not ready, and wandered out to 
the stoep to wait. 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 155 

The doctor drove up while he was there, and went 
in to see the patient. Heckraft hung about to re- 
ceive his report. He wanted to caution him against 
divulging the truth concerning Gommet’s illness, his 
object being to keep the affair as quiet as possible. 

The doctor was some time in the sick-room. When 
he came out Alieta followed him, and remained talking 
with him for several minutes in the living-room. Heck- 
raft moved so that he should not appear to intrude 
at the interview; and presently the doctor came out 
to him on the stoep. 

“How’s the patient?” Heckraft asked him. 

“Quite as well as I expected,” was the answer. 
“His temperature has run up, but that is a develop- 
ment one is prepared for. Poor chap! he seems to 
have something on his mind. I’m hoping that later 
he will confide in Miss Van der Vyver. That girl 
is a brick. Not one woman in a hundred would do 
what she is doing. ... By the way, I forgot to at- 
tend to your hand this morning. Shall I have a look 
at it now?” 

“Thanks; that’s all right. Miss Van der Vyver 
bandaged it for me. I don’t think there is any need 
to disturb it. It’s only a cut.” Heckraft thrust the 
bandaged hand out of sight. “We’re not making a 
noise about Gommet’s accident,” he added. . . . “He’s 
down with a touch of fever, if anyone feels curious.” 

Doctor Seely looked closely at the speaker. 

“It is just possible that people will feel more 
curiosity on Miss Van der Vyver’s account than on 
Gommet’s,” he said. 

“Why?” Heckraft demanded curtly. 

The other was slow in replying. 

“I’ve known Miss Van der Vyver for a good many 
years,” he said at length, “therefore her present action 
seems perfectly natural to me. And I daresay, though 


156 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


you haven't known her so long, you have become 
sufficiently intimate to realise that this is the practical 
form her kindness would be likely to take. But there 
are those who don’t know her so well, and when they 
find she is staying in this house they will want some 
sort of an explanation. Do you think that a touch 
of fever adequately explains the case?” 

“Well, I don’t know. ... I never thought of it 
like that,” Heckraft admitted after reflection. 

“I think,” the doctor observed, “that in fairness to 
Miss Van der Vyver we will be obliged to allow the 
accident at least. But we will keep it as quiet as pos- 
sible The affair is likely to excite a purely local 
interest.” 

“It’s to be regretted that it’s such a damned un- 
charitable world,” Heckraft grumbled. 

Doctor Seely laughed. 

“We can’t alter human nature, I’m afraid,” he 
said. “Another flood might do it. . . . But then again, 
there’d have to be another Noah and his family to 
start things going, so the old prejudices would still 
exist. A world free from scandal would need to be 
sexless ; existing evils appear to me preferable. But 
then I’m sufficiently conservative to be satisfied with 
things as they are.” 

Heckraft remained on the stoep after the motor 
had driven off, lost in thought. Alieta’s own words 
to him earlier in the day, her anxiety to learn how 
her conduct impressed him, as much as what the doc- 
tor had said on the same subject, gave him food for 
reflection. It occurred to him that the surest way 
to settle this difficulty was to persuade her to become 
engaged to himself, and to marry him at an early 
date. The arrangement with Johnson, he believed, 
had never been made public, therefore the announce- 
ment of their engagement would create no great stir. 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 157 


He resolved to set all scruples aside, and speak 
frankly to her; in the circumstances delay only in- 
creased the difficulties of a situation which his know- 
ledge of the world forced him to admit was open to 
misconstruction. The point in the argument which 
he missed was that an engagement between Alieta and 
himself would complicate rather than simplify mat- 
ters. In his reasoning Heckraft trained his mind to 
work in accordance with his inclination. It is a 
common enough practice, and often, as in this case, 
quite unwitting. 

He was roused eventually from his reverie by Alieta 
summoning him to tea. She came to the window and 
called him. 

“Why didn’t you have your tea sooner?” she 
asked. . . . “Everything is spoilt.” 

“I wasn’t hungry,” he answered, and bearing in 
mind his recent resolutions, added boldly: “I pre- 
ferred to wait until you could join me.” 

“Oh ! but you mustn’t do that,” she said. “I shan’t 
always be free to come to meals at the right time. 
Katje will wait on me. You must not let my being 
here upset the household arrangements.” 

“There’s nobody to study,” he answered. 

“And what about your work?” she asked, smiling. 

“That’s finished for the day,” he replied easily. 
“Come now, you would not force me to sup alone 
when there is nothing to call for haste?” 

Alieta bent over the lamp, which had been turned 
too high, and lowered the wick before speaking. 

“Rudgubadi will take offence if you neglect her 
culinary efforts,” she said. 

“Rudgubadi never bothers her head about anyone 
except Gommet,” he answered, and could have bit- 
ten out his tongue the next minute for the indiscre- 
tion of his speech. But Alieta had not heard the 


158 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 

scandal with which Heckraft’s mind had been poi- 
soned, and she took his words in the sense in which 
he had uttered them. 

“That’s the Indian characteristic,” she said, “faith- 
fulness to one person’s interests. . . . All the same, 
she’ll resent it if you let her omelets get cold. And 
tea which has been standing for an hour isn’t whole- 
some to drink.” 

“We’ll soon remedy that,” he said, and rang the 
bell for a fresh supply. 

When the tea pot had been replenished, and the 
cold omelet succeeded by another newly cooked, they 
sat down. Alieta was frankly hungry, but Heckraft 
with his mind intent upon her, and his thoughts for 
ever working round the problem of how to approach 
her without outraging her feelings, made but an in- 
different meal. He was so engaged in watching 
Alieta that he forgot to eat. He watched her white 
hands moving among the tea things, and was incensed 
at the sparkle of the diamonds on her finger, re- 
minding him of the tie which bound her and which 
he proposed to break. He watched the glint of the 
lamplight on the brightness of her hair; it touched 
the loose curls on her temples and turned them to 
pale gold. And he watched the long white curve of 
her throat and hungered to kiss it, the slender, swan- 
like throat that gave such a proud poise to the small 
head. 

He debated within himself whether he should 
speak to her that evening. . . . 

But his courage faltered while he watched her and 
tried to frame some coherent sentences in his mind 
that would lead up to a declaration of his love. Viewed 
in the light of his very uncertain Future, a proposal 
of marriage to a woman already, and highly advanta- 
geously, engaged, appeared an act of amazing im- 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 159 

pertinence. The longer he considered it the more 
outrageous it seemed. . . . 

And yet, he reasoned, it would be ridiculous to lose 
a chance of happiness if the chance were his for the 
asking. 

Alieta looked up suddenly and surprised him 
watching her with the new, intent look in his eyes 
which she had not seen in them before. She was 
startled. It seemed to her that a hand was being 
laid upon her heart, a hand that was ruthlessly tear- 
ing aside its reservations and discovering its secrets. 
She felt profoundly disquieted; nor was she reas- 
sured by the easy flow of commonplace into which 
Heckraft plunged forthwith. For the second time 
that day her being had been stirred to its depths by 
the near presence of this man. That was all her mind 
could take in at the moment, and it troubled her. 


XVIII 


A LI ETA had been playing with fire and she burnt 
her fingers, as many people do, before find- 
ing out that it is not a wise proceeding. Most 
practices with an element of danger in them appeal 
strongly to human nature, and even when the danger 
becomes apparent it is not easy to forego the excite- 
ment from reasons of discretion alone. The best of 
women is a coquette at heart no less than her inferior 
sisters, and in cases where the coquetry is unsuspected 
it becomes, as is inevitable where weakness is con- 
cealed from the knowledge of its possessor, an active 
peril. 

Alieta had fallen in love with Anthony Heckraft. 
She knew it, though the revelation had only come 
to her when she held his cut and bleeding hand in 
hers and felt through her whole being the thrill of 
emotional excitement which moved her at the con- 
tact. She believed that he suspected it. Something 
which she had read in his eyes when she had sur- 
prised them fixed on her across the space of the tea- 
table had warned her that her secret was in danger 
of being discovered by the last person on earth she 
would have chosen to learn the truth. What she did 
not know was that Heckraft loved her. She believed 
that in playing with fire she ran the risk of burning 
herself only; that he was in danger of getting hurt, 
badly hurt, never occurred to her. He had always 
seemed to her so aloof even in his friendship. Un- 
160 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 161 


accustomed to look beneath the surface for motives 
of conduct which her more primitive upbringing failed 
to suggest, it had not struck her that the knowledge 
of her engagement to Johnson was a sufficient reason 
to account for this diffidence in a man of Heckraft’s 
type. Alieta was unversed in the more conventional 
type of man; the people with whom she came mostly 
in contact, with the exception of Harold, were simple 
souls who worked hard and lived prudently and 
usually married for expediency when it was con- 
venient to do so. The ordering of one’s conduct by 
certain rules prescribed by convention was a pro- 
ceeding she had no knowledge of. Her life hitherto 
had followed along simpler lines. 

The new self-consciousness that was born in Alieta 
of these reflections caused her to avoid Heckraft per- 
sistently. Katje brought her meals to her in the room 
that had been his, and, save when she was resting, 
she did not leave the sick-room. 

Mrs. Van der Vyver called during the morning 
and stayed for an hour, more, Alieta felt, for the 
sake of appearances, though there was no one to see 
her, than from any inclination to waste her morning 
in talk. She pressed for a definite statement as to 
when Alieta would return home, and, despite her 
objections, forced her way into the invalid’s room to 
see if he was not well enough to dispense with nursing. 
Gommet, in his knowledge of Mrs. Van der Vyver’s 
talking powers, shammed sleep, and Alieta, who knew 
that he was shamming, felt inwardly amused, while 
Mrs. Van der Vyver, dissatisfied but impressed none 
the less at sight of the white face on the pillow in its 
collar of bandages, backed out of the bedroom and 
took her departure, leaving Alieta as on the former 
occasion mistress of the situation. 

Gommet had passed a fair night and was going on 


i&2 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


well. He gave surprisingly little trouble, and it was 
evident from his docility and the manner in which 
he obeyed his nurse that he appreciated her kindness. 
When he was not sleeping he lay and watched her 
with a hungry affection and pain in his eyes that 
made her heart ache. If only she could have brought 
his wife to his bedside so that she might see that 
look in his eyes, she felt she would surely be touched, 
even to the point of forgiving all that had happened 
in the past to kill her love for him. As soon as he 
was well enough to speak on the subject, Alieta de- 
termined to ask him for his wife’s address. 

In the afternoon Heckraft also paid a short visit 
to the sickroom. It was the only occasion he had 
of seeing Alieta that day, and it was a very brief 
interview at that. He felt unreasonably annoyed with 
her for keeping away from the living-room. She was 
over-playing the role of nurse; and there was no 
credit in her absenting herself from meals since no 
one save themselves could know of the prudence of 
her conduct, nor, had they been wiser, were outsiders 
likely to be impressed by her discretion. She was 
merely punishing him. In his chagrin he called her 
a prude while knowing that the term was inapplicable. 
Whatever her reason might be for avoiding him it was 
assuredly not prompted by prudery. 

He left early for the hotel, and spent the evening 
playing bridge with the manager and a couple of men 
up from Durban for the week-end, determined in his 
pique, since she made it so very evident that she did 
not desire his company, to keep out of her way. 

But the morning found his anger against her melt- 
ed; a hungry longing for her presence submerged 
every other emotion. He reasoned that since the 
woman he desired to see was living beneath the same 
roof it was absurd to suppose she could successfully 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 163 


evade him for long. He decided to exercise patience. 
His turn would come. If she persistently refused to 
join him at meals he would write and ask her to give 
him an audience. 

But there was no need for him to make his ap- 
peal in writing. It was Alieta who moved first, and 
her move was so unexpected, yet so entirely charac- 
teristic in its frank impulsiveness, that it discon- 
certed as greatly as it pleased him. In the end it pre- 
cipitated matters. 

Heckraft had finished work for the day, and was 
shutting the side lights of the sheds, which the Coolies 
had omitted to see to, before going across to the 
house. There were six large lights on either side of 
the building. He was closing them from the outside, 
and had his back to the road so that he did not see 
Alieta leave the house and cross the road and come 
towards him. He was unaware of her presence until 
she was close beside him, when he looked round with 
a start, and, unprepared for seeing her, was conscious 
that he changed colour. 

“These fanlights are awkward for you with your 
maimed hand,” she said, and took hold of the heavy 
frame with him and helped him to lower it. 

“That was a kind thought of yours,” he returned, 
and added with a mendacious and deliberate appeal 
for sympathy: “The hand inconveniences me more 
than I expected.” 

“Has the doctor seen it?” she inquired. 

“No.” 

“But why? ... I told you to let him attend to it. 
You may do mischief by neglecting it.” 

He looked at her strangely. 

“The neglect is on your side,” he answered. “I 
informed you no one else should touch it.” 


164 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


Alieta flushed swiftly, and then looked faintly 
amused. 

“We will shut these windows,” was all she said. 

“Practical!” he commented, and smiled also. “So 
we will.” 

They closed all the lights on the one side and then 
went round to the other. When these also were low- 
ered Heckraft insisted on the necessity for fastening 
them from inside the building. Alieta elected to re- 
main without, believing that he could manage un- 
aided; but he turned at the door and called her. 

“Miss Van der Vyver,” he said, with a hint at re- 
proach in his voice, “I am afraid I must trouble you 
further.” 

Alieta entered the building. It was filled with a 
dusky twilight out of which Heckraft’s figure loomed 
dim and uncertain against a background of lumber, 
and stacked poles, and piles of smaller timber. She 
stepped over the litter of bark on the floor and joined 
him. It was obvious to her that he had called her 
in for another purpose than that which he had stated ; 
there was no reaching the lights from inside because 
of the timber which lined the walls. He made no 
pretence of attempting to fasten them, nor did he 
make any other demand on her aid. He stood quite 
still facing her, with his left hand resting lightly on 
the poles beside which they stood. 

“Why do you persistently avoid me?” he asked 
with a suddenness for which Alieta was unprepared. 
But if she felt taken aback she did not betray it. 
She looked at him steadily. 

“Did you bring me in here to ask that?” she 
said. 

“I brought you in here because of it,” he returned. 
“It is the only chance I have of speaking with you.” 

She lowered her eyes. 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 165 


“I was under the impression that I came to nurse 
Mr. Gommet," she said. 

“Is there any reason in that which prevents your 
being ordinarily friendly towards me?” he demanded. 

He took up a piece of wood, weighed it for a sec- 
ond or so on his palm, and then put it down. 

“Why, because you are nursing Gommet, am I 
condemned to eat in solitude, and otherwise be treat- 
ed as though I didn't exist? ... I might get blood 
poisoning in this hand for all the thought you've 
given it." 

He paused, but she made no response to his com- 
plaint. She had given the wounded hand plenty of 
thought, had longed to, but feared to treat it ; and she 
loved to hear him grumble at her seeming neglect. 

“You’ve not a word, you see, to say in self- justifica- 
tion," he went on. “You are conscious of having 
treated me in a very shabby fashion. And you don’t 
allow even that you’re sorry. . . . I’m not a patient 
man by any means, and I consider that I have been 
sufficiently long suffering. ... I wish to draw your 
attention to the fact, Miss Van der Vyver, that I 
stand between you and the door." 

Alieta looked up. A faint smile curved the red 
lips and lurked in the depths of her eyes. Heckraft, 
despite the light banter of his words, looked serious 
enough. He felt, though Alieta was far from sus- 
pecting it, decidedly and increasingly nervous. 

“I see that," Alieta answered. She hesitated, and 
the smile at the corners of her mouth widened. “I 
am quite satisfied that that fact imposes no restraint 
on my liberty." 

He shook his head. 

“You are a wise woman," he remarked; “you have 
learnt that danger and fear seldom exist apart, and 
fear you don’t possess. At the same time, I would 


1 66 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


point out that though your liberty may not be threat- 
ened, our positions give me the advantage. You can- 
not close this interview with your customary incon- 
siderate haste without taking me by the two shoulders 
and moving me out of your path. ... I have some- 
thing to say to you, and since you give me so few 
opportunities I propose to make the most of this. . . . 
That isn’t generous, — is it?” he added, scrutinising 
closely her blushing, downcast face. “But — what am 
I to do?” 

He took one of her hands as it hung loosely at her 
side, and held it in a close firm clasp. 

“Dear, I know that I ought not to say what I’m 
going to say. . . . I’ve weighed all there is for and 
against it so often in my mind that I know exactly 
how it will appear to an outsider, — how it must ap- 
pear to you. ... I ought not to tell you — but I must 
tell you. . . . I’m breaking all the rules of the game, 
but — I love you. That’s my sole justification. I’m a 
poor man, dear, and my prospects are not particularly 
rosy, and I’ve got the consummate cheek to ask you 
to throw up everything in order to follow my poor 
fortunes. . . . Alieta, will you marry me? — just be- 
cause I love you so — my dear!” 

Alieta raised wide startled eyes to his. She did not 
withdraw her hand ; it lay cold and inert in his warm 
grip ; her face in the dim light looked white and tragic. 
His own face was tense too, and he shook from head 
to foot with emotion as a man might shake from cold. 
He was prepared in a sense for her answer; he 
anticipated it; not for one moment had he imag- 
ined that he could win out of hand; but if he could 
only wring an admission from her that she loved 
him in return, he would be satisfied and be prepared 
to fight. 

“I can’t,” she answered, and stared at him dully. “I 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 167 

thought you knew. . . . I’m engaged to Harold Tohn- 
son.” 

“Oh, Lord !” he said. 

He dropped her hand and half turned away. 

“But you knew/’ Alieta persisted. 

“Of course I knew. . . . Haven’t I been admitting 
it? . . . If it hadn’t been for that I’d have told you 
what I’ve just told you months ago.” 

“I’m sorry,” Alieta said simply. “I never supposed 
you cared. . . . I — I didn’t think I was doing you 
any harm.” 

“You are not,” he returned gravely. “The mere fact 
of loving you is good in itself. If you had been mar- 
ried when I met you I should have loved you just 
the same, and never regretted loving you; the only 
difference is I shouldn’t have told you.” 

“But I am as good as married,” Alieta said. 

“Are you ?” 

He took a step nearer and looked her straight in 
the eyes. 

“That’s what I’m bent on finding out,” he said. “If 
you love the man you are engaged to as a wife should 
love her husband, you’ll hear no more from me. If 
you don’t love him with your whole heart, if you think 
the day may come when you will regret your choice, 
then pause now, and give him, as well as me, the bene- 
fit of your doubt . . . Alieta,” he took her by the 
shoulders and held her firmly, his earnest gaze com- 
pelling her reluctant eyes to meet his, “there is one 
tragedy greater than missing love entirely, and that 
is a mistaken marriage. ... I wouldn’t have you suf- 
fer that.” 

Alieta’s eyes looked back into his, dark with pain 
and yearning, and deep with conflicting thoughts and 
emotions that warred incessantly in her breast. Per- 
haps he hurried her too much. He would have been 


1 68 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


wiser had he given her time to think, — opportunity 
to battle with her scruples and readjust her sense of 
right. At the moment she could only feel that the 
offer of love which this man was making was wrong 
in the circumstances, that to listen to him was an act 
of disloyalty on her part to the man whose ring she 
wore. 

“I am not the only person to be considered,” she 
said. “You wouldn’t have me think simply of my- 
self?” 

“No,” he answered. “But I would wish you to re- 
member that your happiness is as important as an- 
other’s — more important in my opinion.” 

“I am bound in honour to Harold,” she said slowly 
after a pause. 

He bit his lip. 

“That isn’t the question,” he insisted. “Forgive me 
.... but, having gone so far, I must know the truth. 
. . . Do you love him?” 

For the fraction of a moment Alieta hesitated. Then 
her eyes fell before his. 

“Yes — I love him,” she faltered. 

Heckraft removed his hands from her shoulders. 

“Pardon my blundering, and my presumption,” he 
said, — “and forget if you can, what I have said.” 

He moved aside, and Alieta with a little catch of 
her breath, which was not a sob but was caused by 
excessive emotion, hurried past him, and sped swiftly 
out of the place. 

An hour later, though he was not aware how long 
he remained after she left him, Heckraft emerged 
from the darkened building, and shutting the door be- 
hind him, crossed the road and entered the house. 


XIX 


P ATIENTLY Mambersad waited at the baas’ el- 
bow with his soft, gazelle-like eyes intent on 
the grave, preoccupied face. Three times he 
had uncovered the savoury steaming dish in front of 
Heckraft, and as many times replaced the cover for 
fear that the mess should cool before the baas con- 
descended to help himself. 

Mambersad was a Natal bom Indian, and used the 
colonial form of address in place of the sahib of his 
country. As a matter of fact, most Indians, Madras 
or Calcutta boys, adopt the familiar word “baas” 
after a brief residence in the country; it is a more 
generally accepted style of address. 

It was a strange supper-table, had anyone been 
there to look upon the scene. The man seated at the 
head of it, motionless, making no pretence at eating, 
his strong thoughtful face set and abstracted, his 
bandaged hand resting on the table-cloth beside his 
empty plate, and the small immovable figure beside 
him that might have been a bronze statue but for the 
occasional flicker of the black lashes which partially 
veiled the speaking eyes, and the quite automatic, ten- 
tative movement with which at stated intervals the 
thin brown hand was advanced to uncover, and again 
to recover, the dish in front of Heckraft’s plate. 

Eventually Heckraft roused himself, and immedi- 
ately Mambersad became swiftly and silently active. 
He uncovered the dish for the fourth time, and Heck- 
169 


170 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 

raft helped himself mechanically from force of habit, 
and began to eat. Nature asserts herself, even in the 
case of a man in love and badly disappointed. Heck- 
raft satisfied his hunger, and then rose from the table 
and lighted his pipe. 

“Shut the window,” he said irritably. 

Mambersad obeyed. It was still early in the season, 
and when the sun set the nights came in cold. He 
looked at the logs in the grate, and then inquiringly 
at Heckraft. 

“Will the baas have a fire ?” he asked. 

“No.” 

Heckraft bethought himself that he would be leav- 
ing shortly for the hotel. Then he remembered Alieta. 
It was possible that Alieta would sit in the room when 
he was gone. 

“Yes; light it,” he said. 

Mambersad squatted on his heels and held a match 
to the chippings of wood with which the fire was laid ; 
he blew it into flames with his mouth ; and Heckraft, 
sensible of the warmth and comfort, drew a chair up 
before the hearth and sat down. Mambersad brought 
in coffee which he placed on a small table and set at 
the baas’ elbow. Then he withdrew, and the man was 
left alone, staring into the leaping flames as they 
curled round the dried wood and shot upwards, long 
crimson tongues darting forth like the tongue of a ser- 
pent which licks the dust. 

“I believe,” he said musingly, watching a red fork 
of flame that darted out at him between the bars, 
“I believe I am going to take this badly.” 

He sat forward with his hands clasped between his 
knees. His pipe, which he had not attempted to 
smoke, had gone out; it lay unheeded upon the table 
beside the untouched cup of coffee. Never in his life 
before had Anthony Heckraft felt so completely 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 171 


stranded, — without place, without hope, without am- 
bition, — utterly adrift on the voyage of life, — alone 
in the world, and unwanted. 

“If I don’t do something,” he mused, still staring 
at the fire as though the dancing flames could furnish 
him with a suggestion by the example of their own 
activity, “I shall make a fool of myself. But what is 
there to do ? . . . Oh damn ! . . 

He sat for a long while lost in thought. So ab- 
stracted was he, so unconscious of the progress of 
time, that when Mambersad entered to remove his 
coffee cup he looked up resentfully and rebuked him 
for his haste. 

Heckraft put out a hand for his coffee when the 
boy retired, and found that it was cold. The fire was 
getting low. He flung on fresh logs, looked at his 
watch, and rose. 

“Overstayed my time,” he muttered. “She’ll think 
that’s done purposely.” 

As though in answer to his thought the door opened 
and Alieta entered. She looked tired, he decided, 
otherwise there was nothing in her appearance or man- 
ner to recall the stress of the recent interview. That 
she was prepared to see him was evident ; she had not 
entered under the impression that he had left. She 
had nevertheless, he observed, some difficulty in meet- 
ing his eyes. 

“A fire !” she said, looking past him at the glowing 
logs in the grate. “How comfortable that looks !” 

“It feels comfortable too,” he answered easily. “Sit 
here and try it. I’m just off.” 

“I want before you go,” she said, “to dress the 
hand.” 

“Oh, that!” He put it behind him out of sight. 
“It really isn’t necessary to trouble you. The hand 
is practically well.” 


172 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


“You complained,” she reminded him gravely, “of 
its inconveniencing you.” 

He smiled. 

“Fm afraid I was making a bid for sympathy. My 
flesh has an annoying habit of healing at once. I re- 
member as a small boy keeping a cut open in order to 
escape doing sums.” 

Alieta, to his complete satisfaction, laughed. Her 
amusement lessened the strain both were conscious 
existed until that little spontaneous laugh snapped the 
tension. 

“I should have considered the hurt more of a pun- 
ishment than the sums,” she said. 

“It was,” he answered. “I was caught at the dodge 
and licked for malingering. The chastisement, you 
see, wasn’t efficacious in curing me altogether.” 

“I’m inclined to encourage you,” she returned. “I 
should like, if you don’t mind, just to see the hand. 
It would be a satisfaction to me to judge for myself 
how it was going on.” 

“Since you put it that way,” he answered, “of course 
I don’t mind. But remember, I’ve admitted that it’s 
practically healed, so you can’t blame me, when you 
see it, for giving you unnecessary trouble.” 

“That youthful experience wasn’t altogether without 
its effect,” Alieta replied, smiling. 

Heckraft smiled with her. 

“No,” he said. “It has left me with a strong sym- 
pathy for all malingerers. It is so good to be able to 
shirk one’s responsibilities and receive sympathy at 
the same time. . . . Shall I ring the bell for the But- 
ler?” 

“I can fetch all I require,” she answered, and left 
the room to fetch the dressing which she had put in 
readiness when, the doctor having paid his visit be- 
fore Heckraft returned to the house, she had realised 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 173 


that unless she attended to his hand it would go un- 
cared for. 

When she returned Heckraft was standing by the 
table busily unwinding the bandage from the wounded 
hand. 

“There !” he remarked, displaying it. “Did I boast 
when I told you how abominably healthy I am? It 
only requires time, you see, and keeping clean.” 

Alieta took the hand in hers. Heckraft set his teeth 
as she bent over it and touched it so gently with her 
fingers that they seemed to caress him. She was in- 
flicting a refinement of torture so little endurable in 
the present condition of affairs that it made a tremen- 
dous demand on his fortitude to suffer her touch with- 
out losing command of his feelings. Was she delib- 
erately playing with him, he wondered, that in face 
of what he had so recently told her she could behave 
as though nothing unusual had happened between 
them? 

“Yes, it's healing quite nicely,” she said, in a low, 
level voice. “Nature is kind to you, — she can do 
more for you than I. . . . I’ll put on a fresh dressing 
which will make it more comfortable.” 

She released the hand to prepare the dressing. Heck- 
raft watched in silence while she spread some new 
lint with ointment. When it was ready he advanced 
his hand mechanically, and she applied the lint. 

“I think,” she remarked slowly, as she deftly wound 
on a fresh bandage, “that probably there will be a 
scar.” 

“Yes,” he agreed ; “there will be a scar.” 

Something in the manner of his admission brought 
the distressed crimson to Alieta’s face. She bent her 
head lower over her work to hide if possible the tears 
that welled in her eyes. If that day was to sear its 
mark upon him, it was likely to leave its impression 


174 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


upon her also. Blinded with tears she could scarcely 
see to stitch the bandage in place. The needle, ready 
threaded, was stuck in the front of her dress. She 
felt for it with trembling fingers that fumblingly ful- 
filled their task. Then she bent her face nearer and 
snapped the thread, as she had done on a former oc- 
casion, with her teeth. Was it his imagination, he 
wondered, or did she in reality press her lips to his 
wrist ? 

She turned away abruptly, and began gathering to- 
gether the things she had brought with her. 

“Thank you,” he said. “I — am glad you did it 
after all. . . . You see, I stood in need of a little sym- 
pathy.” 

Aware of her emotion, he had turned his back to 
her, and was staring down into the fire. She glanced 
towards him swiftly. There was that in the droop of 
his head and shoulders that conveyed an air of de- 
jection which it hurt her to observe. Alieta recog- 
nised instinctively that he was the type of man who 
neither loves lightly nor suffers disappointment easily. 
She was conscious of feeling intensely sorry for him, 
and wished, without knowing how, to give some ex- 
pression to her sorrow. 

“One feels diffident about offering sympathy to the 
strong,” she observed. 

“You need not be,” he said. He faced round slowly, 
and looked at her. “Fm beginning to think that I’m 
rather weak in some respects. I want your sympathy 
badly. . . .” He smiled faintly. “Fm feeling round, 
you observe, after the crumbs. . . . 

“It sounds a little bald,” he added jerkily, filling a 
pause, “after what has so recently passed, to ask you 
to accept my sincere friendship. Yet, had you been a 
married woman when I met you, I should have made 
that demand.” 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 175 

Alieta advanced deliberately, and joined him where 
he stood upon the hearth. She lifted her candid, fear- 
less eyes to his. 

“But of course," she said, “we can be friends. . . . 
We are friends/' 

“Thank you," he answered. He took her hand, 
and held it for a while in his. “I don't want you to 
imagine that there is more in the offer than appears 
on the surface. All that’s finished with. You have 
nothing to fear from me." 

“I am sure of it," she replied quietly. 

Some impulse within her fought with her outward 
control and tempted her to tell him that had he come 
into her life sooner things would have been differ- 
ent, but her natural womanly reserve came to her aid 
in this crisis, and all she said in expression of the 
tumult of feeling was, — 

“I consider myself fortunate in having won your 
regard." 

He loosed her hand. 

“And I reckon myself fortunate in that my path 
has been privileged to cross yours," he returned. “It 
is the parting of the ways now, and that is always 
painful. Later, perhaps, I shall be able to look back 
on this episode without regret, and realise the advan- 
tage of your friendship. When you are married we 
shall come little in contact." 

“There is no immediate prospect of my marriage," 
she said, and sighed unconsciously. “Many obstacles 
stand in the way." 

“Yes !” he said. 

His thoughts reverted to the interview he had had 
with Johnson senior, at which the latter had plainly 
given him to understand that the marriage would not 
have his sanction. 


176 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


“Love will sweep those obstacles aside,” he added 
confidently. 

Alieta looked at him uncertainly. He had but given 
expression to her own convictions on the subject, but 
loyalty to her lover urged her to offer a protest in his 
defence. 

“Some obstacles are not so easily surmounted,” she 
returned. 

“Well, of course,” he agreed. “I am arguing in 
ignorance of the circumstances, always an unwise pro- 
ceeding. Whatever the obstacles may be, I trust that 
they will not stand between you and your happiness 
long. ... I don’t suppose there is any way in which 
I can help. If there is, I hope you will not hesitate to 
command me. It could only be a pleasure to me to 
serve you at any time. . . . And now,” he said, 
forcing himself to a lighter mood, “I will cut across 
to the hotel. But before going I should like to look 
in on Gommet.” 

He went to the door, and then came swiftly back 
and stood again facing her upon the hearth. 

“It would be absurd for me to go without telling 
you,” he muttered unsteadily, “that if ever you change 
your mind, one word — aye, a look even — will bring 
me back to your side.” 

Then he wheeled about abruptly and left her, and 
Alieta remained for a long while after he was gone 
gazing down, as he had gazed, into the leaping flames 
of the wood fire with blurred, unseeing eyes. 


XX 


T HE fog hung heavy in the valley. The morning 
sun which usually dispelled the mists was 
hiding sulkily behind the clouds ; tentatively at 
intervals it shot forth a searching gleam, and then 
withdrew again as though discouraged by the density 
of the vapour which hid the hills. The air was keen 
and crisp for the time of year, for winter lay be- 
hind. 

Along the steep road from the station a motor trav- 
elled rapidly. It swung round the bend and past the 
sheds. The driver kept a lookout as he passed the 
works as though prepared, in the event of seeing any- 
one, to stop the car. But the man who was usually 
to be found there at that hour of the day was ill in 
bed, and Heckraft was riding on the land. Johnson 
knew nothing of Gommet’s indisposition. He flashed 
past the sheds, and was flashing past the engineer’s 
house, when the sight of a woman’s figure at the 
window of the sitting-room caught his attention. 

“By Jove!” he said. 

He did not recognise it for Alieta’s. The glimpse 
he had caught had not been sufficient to assure him 
of more than that it was a woman’s figure, and Euro- 
pean at that. He slowed down, scarcely conscious 
that he was stopping the car, the action was so in- 
stinctive and unpremeditated. 

The woman opened the window and stepped out 
upon the stoep. Johnson’s amazement on perceiving 

1 77 


178 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


that it was not Mrs. Gommet, as he had imagined, but 
Alieta, changed in quality; it did not increase — there 
had been no room for increase in his first astonish- 
ment — but it gained in indignant incredulity. 

“You!” he almost shouted. ‘‘What in hell are you 
doing here?” 

She came out into the road and stood beside the 
car. 

“I wish,” she said quietly, “that you would not 
allow your feelings to get the better of you.” 

He stared at her in angry astonishment. 

“My God!” he said. “You take things coolly.” 

“It would be better if you learnt to take things with 
less heat,” she observed. 

“Do you know what the hour is? . . . And it’s 
Monday,” he sputtered. — “When did you get here?” 

“I have been here some days,” she replied. 

“But why? . . . Who’s with you?” he demanded 
in a breath. 

“Only Katje.” She smiled suddenly. “I suppose 
it may appear monstrous — to you. It is a little un- 
usual. ... 1 am nursing Mr. Gommet.” 

“You ! — nursing Gommet! . . . What’s the matter 
with him?” 

He opened the door of the car, and stood in the 
road beside her. Alieta regarded him with an exas- 
perating air of indifference. He was not to know that 
the outward calm masked a tumult of emotion. She 
was feeling not only nervous, but horribly shy. 

“Come with me to the house,” she said, “and I will 
tell you. It is cold out here in the fog.” 

He dragged off his overcoat and put it round her 
shoulders, not tenderly, but as a man might suddenly 
recalled to a neglected duty. They walked back in 
silence. Alieta led the way to the sitting-room, and 
closed the door behind them. Johnson took up a posi- 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 179 


tion near the window, and stood regarding her with 
the aggrieved manner of a sulky schoolboy. He would 
have enjoyed to flare out in righteous passion, but 
was conscious that he occupied the disadvantageous 
position of being more keen on their engagement than 
she was. 

“Well?” he said shortly. 

Alieta stood by the table, one hand resting upon it. 
Her eyes evaded his. The fact that she had a dif- 
ficulty in meeting his gaze gave him greater confidence, 
it seemed to reverse their positions, and put him for 
the time in the right. 

“Well?” he repeated, and was conscious of the con- 
descension of his manner. He was feeling magnani- 
mous. 

And then Alieta spoilt the harmony of things. She 
also was conscious of his condescension; and she 
smiled. 

“It’s all very fine for you to stand grinning there,” 
he observed rudely; “but I’m waiting for an explana- 
tion of your extraordinary conduct.” 

Alieta began pushing the table-cloth into pleats with 
her finger. 

“It is no use being angry, Harold,” she said. “Mr. 
Gommet — hurt himself. There was no one else to 
nurse him, so I stayed.” 

“Hurt himself! — How?” he asked. 

Alieta hesitated. 

“I think he was shaving. Anyway, he cut himself 
badly with a razor.” 

“Oh!” he interjected scornfully. . . . “D. T.’s, I 

suppose, and attempted suicide. How the devil did 
you get to hear of it?” 

“Mr. Heckraft told me. I met him on the road as 
he was riding for the doctor ; so I came back here to 
see what I could do. I have been here ever since.” 


i8o VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


“Heckraft, of course!” he sneered. “He’d be glad 
to get you here on any pretext. ... So that’s the way 
you amuse yourself in my absence?” 

“It hasn’t been exactly funny,” she replied. 

“Why didn’t Heckraft write to inform us of the 
accident?” he demanded. 

“We hoped to keep it as quiet as possible,” Alieta 
returned. 

“That also was Heckraft’s idea, I suppose?” 

Alieta made no response. She did not feel equal 
to going deeper into that. Johnson looked savage. 

“I’ll see to it that he gets kicked out of this,” he 
said. . . . “Officious bounder!” 

Alieta reddened. 

“As for you,” he added, his anger against her sud- 
denly kindling anew, “you’ll get your hat, and come 
out of this now — at once. I won’t allow my prom- 
ised wife to play the part of chatelaine for any man.” 

“I’m in the role of nurse, not chatelaine,” she an- 
swered so quietly that he was temporarily disarmed. 
But he still felt aggrieved. 

“You’re nursing Gommet,” he said. “But what of 
Heckraft? ... He isn’t on the sick list too, I sup- 
pose?” 

“jytr. Heckraft is quite well, I believe,” she an- 
swered guardedly. “He is living at the hotel.” 

This was true. Heckraft, since his proposal to 
Alieta, had removed altogether to the hotel. She did 
not feel it incumbent upon her to explain that the 
removal was of very recent date. 

“Why didn’t you write and tell me?” he demanded, 
eyeing her with a suspicious scrutiny that brought the 
red blood to her cheeks. 

“I didn’t write,” she answered, after a brief mo- 
ment for thought, “because I felt that you wouldn’t 
approve, and I didn’t wish to have any unpleasantness. 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 181 


You don’t like Mr. Gommet. ... If there had been 
any other way, beside getting a trained nurse for him, 
I would have taken it. But there was only me.” 

“It’s his wife’s business to nurse him,” he answered 
sourly. 

“Of course it is,” Alieta agreed. “If I knew where 
she was, I would have sent for her.” 

“She wouldn’t have come,” he replied with sulky as- 
surance. 

Alieta regarded him gravely. 

“Oh ! I think if someone had gone to her and shown 
her the matter in its true light, she would have done 
at least that much for him,” she said. 

“Well, we can neither of us answer for Mrs. Gom- 
met,” he returned disagreeably. “And that’s not the 
point. Are you coming away with me? . . . I’ll send 
a nurse to him.” 

“I will only give up my place to his wife,” she 
answered quietly, but with a firmness he was begin- 
ning to recognise he could never overrule with bully- 
ing. “If I knew where his wife was to be found I 
would go to her.” 

“She’s in Maritzburg,” he answered shortly. 

Alieta looked surprised. 

“Do you know her address?” she asked. 

“Yes. ... If you come with me now, I’ll see to 
it that she hears about her husband,” he said. “But 
I don’t promise that she’ll go to him.” 

“I’ll go with you if you’ll take me to her,” she bar- 
gained. 

He was unprepared for this, and manifestly disin- 
clined to agree to the arrangement. 

“Nonsense! You’ve nothing to do with them,” he 
returned sharply. “You leave it to me. . . . I’ll man- 
age it.” 

But Alieta remained obdurate. 


182 valley of a thousand hills 


“When you have managed it I will leave with you/' 
she replied. “But I must see Mrs. Gommet first.” 

Johnson swore under his breath. She reminded 
him of her mother in her inflexible determination. 
He could have struck her at the moment with immense 
satisfaction. 

“I never met such an obstinate woman as you,” he 
exclaimed, and added angrily : “Don’t you trust me ?” 

“I don’t trust her,” she answered. “I want to see, 
and speak with her myself.” 

“Well, — hang it all! — you can do that after she is 
here.” 

Alieta went up to him, and put both hands on his 
arm, looking earnestly into his eyes. 

“Harold,” she said, “I understand my own sex bet- 
ter than you do. . . . I know that if I could see Mrs. 
Gommet I could make her understand too. ... I 
want to see her. I mean to see her. I am not defy- 
ing you as you think, for the sake of appearing un- 
reasonable. ... I am not enjoying it. But this duty 
has been thrust upon me, and shown to me so clearly 
that I cannot overlook it. I have got to see Mrs. Gom- 
met. I have got to see this thing through. Will you 
take me to her? — or must I stay here until I find out 
her address for myself?” 

She paused and looked at him for his answer. He 
reddened uncomfortably beneath her look. Then he 
shook himself free irritably from the clasp of her 
hands. 

“You would leave me no choice,” he said sourly. 
“This isn’t a job for you. . . . leave it to me, I say.” 

“Will you take me ?” she persisted. 

He swung savagely round on his heel with a mut- 
tered imprecation. 

“Oh ! come on ! I’ll drive you there in the car. But 
only on the condition,” he added roughly, “that you 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 183 


hold as little communication with her as possible, and 
that you leave again with me afterwards.” 

“Yes ; if I can persuade her to take my place, I will 
leave with you,” she rejoined. 

The task of persuading Mrs. Gommet was not alto- 
gether an easy one. Johnson whirled Alieta to Mar- 
itzburg in a very short space of time. Mrs. Gommet 
was staying at a large family hotel. Besides her 
bedroom, she had a private sitting-room. To anyone 
who knew how limited was the income with which 
Gommet was able to supply his wife, this fact alone 
would have been significant; but Alieta knew noth- 
ing of such matters ; she accepted things as she found 
them. 

Johnson left her to go inside alone while he waited 
in the quiet shady road with the car. 

“Tell her,” he said authoritatively, as she was leav- 
ing him, and his manner struck her as somewhat odd, 
“that she had jolly well better go back to him.” 

Alieta was shown into Mrs. Gommet’s sitting-room. 
She waited for about five minutes, and then Mrs. 
Gommet entered. For many years Alieta had known 
this woman, known her for a shallow little frivolous 
person who enjoyed masculine admiration above and 
beyond everything; but even Alieta was taken aback 
at Mrs. Gommet’s appearance. The once pretty bright 
hair had been dyed to a ruddy auburn, and her cheeks 
were unmistakably rouged. She wore a very up-to- 
date dress which revealed her figure in suggestive 
and, to Alieta’s idea, unpleasant lines. Her surprise 
at seeing Alieta was very real. 

“Miss Van der Vyver!” she cried shrilly. “What- 
ever brings you here? It’s awfully good of you to 
come and see me in my loneliness,” she added as an 
afterthought. 

Alieta rose from her seat and faced this silly little 


184 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


person who had all but wrecked the life of a man 
who, drunkard though he was, deserved a better 
fate. 

“I have come,” Alieta answered quietly, “on a very 
grave mission. Your husband is ill, Mrs. Gommet, 
and has need of you. I want you to go back with 
me.” 

Mrs. Gommet stared at her. 

“111!” she repeated dully. “Not ” 

She paused. Alieta came in on the pause. 

“He met with an accident,” she said, “several days 
ago. I have been nursing him because there was no 
one else.” 

“An accident!” Mrs. Gommet’s voice rose an oc- 
tave. “He isn’t,” — she said, and broke off again on 
the unfinished sentence. 

“Why wasn’t I told!” she asked. 

“I did not know — no one knew,” Alieta said gently, 
“where you were. As soon as I heard I came for 
you.” 

Mrs. Gommet looked at her strangely, and plucked 
at the curtains with nervous fingers. 

“How did you hear?” she asked. . . . “Who told 
you ?” 

“Mr. Johnson. He brought me here in his car. He 
is waiting to take us back to Drummond. . . . Will 
you come?” 

Mrs. Gommet stared at her. She moistened her 
dry lips with her tongue, looked from Alieta down into 
the road, and laughed hysterically. 

“Mr. Johnson!” she repeated. “He brought 
you! . . .” 

She looked at Alieta again. 

“I can’t go with you,” she said. ... “I can’t. Go 
out and tell him that I say so.” She turned on Alieta 
quite fiercely. “Tell him that I won't” she said. 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 185 


“No/’ Alieta replied steadily, “I won’t tell him that. 
. . . I’ll wait. Presently you’ll think differently. I 
will wait with you here until you consent to go home 
with me.” 

Mrs. Gommet looked at the speaker angrily. Alieta 
was so calm and dignified and beautiful that her anger 
suddenly melted ; in its place a strange self-pity flood- 
ed her poor little hungry soul. 

“Oh, you !” she cried. “It is easy for you.” 

And then she sat down suddenly and broke into 
bitter weeping. 


XXI 


A LIETA remained with Mrs. Gommet for the 
better part of an hour. At the end of that 
time, though she had convinced Mrs. Gommet 
that it was her duty to return to her husband, Mrs. 
Gommet had made it radically clear to her that she 
could not do so in Mr. Harold Johnson’s car. 

“I can’t,” she said, and reiterated the assertion 
many times. “I can’t. ... I should feel so ashamed. 
. . . Send him away. ... I can’t go back with him. 
. . . He can’t mean that, really.” 

Feeling some sympathy with her reluctance, with- 
out understanding it, Alieta went out into the road to 
inform her waiting and increasingly impatient fiance. 

“You had better drive back,” she said : “Mrs. Gom- 
met is going with me by train.” 

He looked at her dubiously and chewed the ends of 
his fair mustache. 

“Why can’t she go alone?” he asked. He had not 
supposed that she would consent to go, and he had 
certainly never intended taking her back in his car. 
“You couldn’t expect that, Harold.” 

“Well, but I want to take you back with me. . . . 
You promised to come back with me.” He looked 
away from her down through the vista of gum trees 
that lined the road on either side. “After all,” he 
said half savagely, “1 don’t know that she’s the right 
sort of companion for you.” 

Alieta regarded his flushed, rebellious face with a 
faint surprise. 


1 86 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 187 


“I couldn’t leave her,” she said. “You don’t under- 
stand, Harold. . . . It’s not easy for her.” 

“That’s her lookout,” he returned brutally. 

“Well, but it’s something that she has consented to 
go back.” 

“It’s a sign of grace, you mean. ... I don’t 
know. ... I’d think more of her in the circum- 
stances if she left him alone.” He swung round on 
her suddenly. “Look here!” he said. “Cut it, and 
come home with me. “I’m sorry now I brought you. 
I was a fool — a blithering ass. But you were so 
beastly importunate. Get in, Alieta. . . . You’ve 
done your part. Leave the rest to her.” 

But Alieta refused to leave her mission half ful- 
filled. 

“I am going to take her to him,” she answered 
firmly. “When I have done that, I will join you at 
Odsani.” 

And nothing he could urge would alter her deter- 
mination. 

Johnson drove off in a temper, and Alieta went back 
to Mrs. Gommet. Mrs. Gommet turned from the 
window as Alieta entered the room after her inter- 
view with Johnson: Alieta felt that she had been 
watching the scene from behind the curtain. Mrs. 
Gommet was openly curious, but guarded in her 
curiosity. 

“What made him bring you here?” she asked. 

“I did,” Alieta answered. 

The other woman stared. 

“I wonder how you manage to make him do things 
against his will,” she said. 

“How do you know it was against his will?” Alieta 
inquired. 

Mrs. Gommet emitted a short laugh. 

“Well, it wasn’t his suggestion, I expect,” she said. 


1 88 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


“It was his idea that you should be nursing your 
husband instead of me,” Alieta returned. 

Mrs. Gommet looked down, and fingered the loose 
ends of ribbon about her waist. 

“I wonder,” she began, and broke off and looked at 
Alieta again. . . . “What is he to you?” she asked 
suddenly. 

Alieta was taken aback at the question. 

“I’m engaged to marry him,” she replied. 

“Oh!” Slowly the warm colour crept into Mrs. 
Gommet’s cheeks behind the rouge. She turned away, 
perhaps conscious of the tell-tale blush and reluctant 
that it should be seen. “I did not know that. . . . 
Since when?” she asked. 

Alieta objected to the catechism. 

“Oh! for some while,” she answered, and added: 
“Whatever does it matter? We are not announcing it 
yet.” 

“A secret engagement!” Mrs. Gommet muttered 
softly. She stared at Alieta. “A secret engagement !” 
she repeated as softly. ... “I didn’t know.” 

Alieta felt suddenly angry. 

“There is nothing clandestine about it,” she said 
proudly. “My people know — and his.” 

Mrs. Gommet faced her squarely. 

“He isn’t good enough for you,” she said dully. “If 
you marry him the day will dawn for you, as it 
dawned for me, when you will regret the step.” 

Alieta flushed. Mrs. Gommet was still scrutinis- 
ing her, but pensively now, and a little wistfully. 

“You are too good for him,” she reiterated softly, 
and Alieta could not be quite sure, but it sounded to 
her as though Mrs. Gommet uttered the word “Brute !” 
between her clenched teeth. 

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Alieta exclaimed with 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 189 


spirit, “why you should say these things to me. I 
would rather you left my affairs alone.” 

“And yet you interfere in mine !” 

The quiet tone in which this statement, which in 
its simple earnestness could scarcely have been styled 
a rebuke, was uttered hit Alieta’s sense of fairness in 
its most vulnerable part. She hesitated, and looked 
at Mrs. Gommet almost apologetically. 

“How can I help it?” she exclaimed. “What can I 
say to justify my interference? ... I have been nurs- 
ing him. ... If you could have seen the pain, — the 
patient wistfulness of his eyes, — if you could have 
heard him, as I did, imploring the doctor to let him 
‘slip out of it,’ you’d understand why I felt I must 
interfere.” 

“Did he ” Mrs. Gommet’s lips whitened — “did 

he try to commit suicide?” she whispered. 

“Yes.” 

Alieta believed that the truth, brutal as it sounded, 
was best. 

“Did he say anything — to explain why he attempted 
his own life?” Mrs. Gommet walked away again to 
the window and stood there with her back to the room. 
Her voice and her manner were exceedingly agitated. 
“He didn’t — leave anything — a letter — about where 
anyone could read it?” she asked jerkily. 

“No.” 

Mrs. Gommet heaved a deep sigh of relief. 

“I’ll go and put a few things together,” she said. 
“If you’ll wait here I shan’t be long.” 

During the journey to Drummond Mrs. Gommet be- 
came more expansive, more frankly confidential. It 
was so long since any woman had spoken to her 
kindly, so long since she had had a sympathetic fem- 
inine ear into which to pour her confidences, that she 
probably said more than she would have done given 


igo VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


time to reflect. With Alieta’s kindly attentive face 
opposite in the otherwise empty carriage, and Alieta’s 
friendly eyes looking into hers, she unburdened some- 
what her guiltily troubled mind. 

“It was my letter, I expect,” she said abruptly, 
apropos of nothing save the unspoken thought in both 
minds, “that made him do it.” 

“If you wrote him an unkind letter,” Alieta re- 
turned soothingly, “you are doing your best to make 
up for it now.” 

Mrs. Gommet smiled, a wintry, doubtful smile. 

“He mightn’t have me back,” she said. 

Alieta surveyed her in silence. This view of the 
matter had not once presented itself to her. She felt 
suddenly inadequate. There was a long pause. 

“You see,” Mrs. Gommet said, breaking in on the 
silence, “I wrote to tell him I didn’t want him to 
provide for me any longer because someone else was 
doing that.” 

She stared at Alieta’s startled face with wide, ap- 
prehensive eyes. Then she began to cry. The friend- 
ly brown eyes opposite had darkened and become sud- 
denly aloof in expression. She withdrew further into 
her corner of the compartment, and wept the rouge on 
her cheeks into streaks, sobbing softly, with her 
shoulders hunched up, like a disconsolate child. 

“You needn’t look like that,” she wailed protest- 
ingly. “It wasn’t altogether my fault. . . . And Joe 
never understood me. . . . And he drank. . . . 
You’ve never had to live with a man who drinks — 
whisky, — dop, — anything. . . . The smell of it was 
never out of him.” She sobbed more energetically 
now, with increased self-pity. “If it hadn't been that 
I had nowhere to go, I couldn’t have stood it as long 
as I did.” 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 191 

Alieta felt suddenly very compassionate towards 
this pathetic little lump of human misery. 

“And yet you are going back to him!” she said, 
and sat appalled at this new difficulty. “How will you 
stand it now?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“Then why are you going back?” the girl asked 
blankly, abruptly made conscious that by her inter- 
ference in the lives of these two human beings whom 
she knew only superficially she might be laying the 
foundation of a greater tragedy than anything that 
had occurred as yet. It is impossible for anyone to 
constitute himself a judge in human affairs. 

“Because he said I must,” Mrs. Gommet sobbed. 

“Who said?” 

“Mr. Johnson — and you.” The tear-stained, woe- 
begone face was lifted swiftly as the afterthought was 
jerked out in frightened, self-conscious haste. “You 
know you persuaded me,” she cried, aggrieved and 
slightly reproachful. “You said I’d taken him for bet- 
ter and worse, that I was selfishly and lightly break- 
ing my marriage vows because I found the bargain 
was not as good as I had expected. . . . You are 
right, in a way, because I did suspect beforehand, — 
only I wanted to be married. A woman ought not to 
go through with marriage unless she is quite sure. 
It is only easy to make allowances before you are 
married to the man.” 

Alieta leaned forward and laid a hand on Mrs. 
Gommet’s knee. 

“I ought not to have tried to persuade you,” she 
said contritely. “I was wrong. I ought simply to 
have told you facts, and have left you to make your 
own decision.” 

“Oh! what does it matter,” Mrs. Gommet said 
pettishly, — now? I’m going back, I suppose. ... It 


192 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


doesn’t seem as though there was anything else for it.” 

She reflected for a while. 

“Joe was at least kind,” she mused. “He never 
knocked me about however hard he drank. If it hadn’t 
been for the smell ” 

She broke off. 

“If only people had left me alone!” she burst forth 
presently, and rolled her handkerchief into a hard lit- 
tle ball, and dabbed her eyes with it. “Men are such 
beasts,” she said. 

Alieta remained silent. 

“And, oh God ! those hills ! . . . the loneliness of it ! 
. . . And the scent of the wattles makes me sick.” 

The moan of discontent smote on Alieta’s heart. 
Had not she also felt discontented with her life, been 
appalled with the loneliness of it? She gazed out 
through the open window at the beauty of the pros- 
pect, at the undulating country beneath the blue, sun- 
lit sky, and the mists that were rapidly rolling away 
like a veil which had shrouded the beauty of the 
morning. 

“Oh! I know,” she said. “My dear, I know! . . . 
But it’s nursing the discontent which shuts out the 
joy. We have got to learn to see the happiness which 
is ours.” 

“Happiness !” scoffed Mrs. Gommet, with the scorn 
of one who has never appreciated the beauty of quiet 
things, to whom joy means merely excitement, and 
pleasure the laudation of others. “What happiness, I 
should like to know, is there to be found in a hole 
like Drummond?” 

And Alieta did not answer with the thought that 
was in her mind, that one should seek happiness, not 
in places, but in oneself. 

“If we’d lived in a town,” Mrs. Gommet said, “it 
would have been different. . . 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 193 

It was rather a defiant, albeit distressed looking lit- 
tle woman who entered with Alieta the home she had 
left secretly five years before. It was by her wish 
that Alieta accompanied her. 

“I'm scared,” she said. . . . “And perhaps Joe 
will turn me out.” 

So Alieta went with her, and stayed in the sitting- 
room, her attention strained and very much on the 
alert, while Mrs. Gommet, after a long hesitation out- 
side her husband’s room, finally braced herself to the 
effort to knock, and without waiting for a response, 
entered. Alieta heard a choking sort of cry, heard 
Mrs. Gommet’s shrill voice, lowered and subdued, fal- 
tering in humble accents: 

“Yes, Joe; it’s me.” 

And then the door shut; and the woman, who Had 
left the man in search of the excitement she called 
happiness, and the husband, who had tried to “slip 
out of it” in order to give her at least a chance to 
marry the other man and live decently, were alone 
with God and each other, in the solitude of their com- 
mon sorrow and their bitter remorse. 


XXII 


A LIETA faced her fiance in the zit-kameer at 
Odsani. She was strangely moved and im- 
pressed by what she had been through, by 
the tragedy she had unwittingly unveiled, had perhaps 
been instrumental in augmenting. She had very lit- 
tle hope of good resulting from her morning’s mis- 
sion. And, unaccountably, she felt a greater com- 
passion for the woman than for the man, who had 
been more sinned against. 

Mrs. Gommet’s mood had affected her deeply, and 
Mrs. Gommet’s words lingered in her memory with 
a sense of warning and future calamity: “A woman 
ought not to go through with marriage unless she is 
quite sure. It is only easy to make allowances be- 
fore you are married to the man.” She was not quite 
sure herself; and she had to make allowance for so 
much. Afterwards, when it was too late, she felt 
that for her, as for Mrs. Gommet, it would be less 
easy to condone little things. Temperamental dif- 
ferences that caused now but slight irritation might 
later assume quite a serious importance. And it was 
not only herself she would wrong in thus lightly un- 
dertaking a duty which might become unbearably irk- 
some; she would be injuring Harold equally with 
herself. . . . 

She took her courage in both hands and quite sim- 
ply demanded to be released from her engagement. 

“I want you,” she said, looking at him squarely as 
194 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 195 


he sat on the sofa beside her, nursing his knee with 
his clasped hands, “to agree to the termination of our 
engagement. I feel— I can’t help feeling— that it is 
a mistake.” 

He planted both feet firmly on the floor before 
replying and turned and looked at her with mouth 
agape. The colour flamed into his face and crim- 
soned his ears and neck. 

“Why?” he demanded thickly, and had Alieta not 
been too thoroughly concerned with the immediate 
matter, she might have noticed that his manner was 
guiltily apprehensive. 

“I don’t think — we are suited to one another.” 

He pulled his fair mustache and eyed her sus- 
piciously. 

“What has made you so suddenly discover that?” 
he asked. 

She folded her hands in her lap, and looked past 
him out through the window. She was endeavouring 
her hardest to blind herself to the real reason, but the 
truth was assertive and set the lesser reasons at de- 
fiance. 

“I don’t love you in the right way. ... I don’t 
love you as a woman should love her husband,” she 
replied, unconsciously quoting Heckraft. 

“Has Mrs. Gommet been saying anything?” he de- 
manded. 

“Mrs. Gommet!” Alieta looked surprised. “What 
has Mrs. Gommet to do with it?” she asked. 

“Nothing, of course,” he answered quickly. “Only 
you were all right till I left you with her.” 

Alieta considered this. 

“Well, perhaps in a way, she has something to do 
with making me see things in a fresh light. ... You 
see, she made a mistake. And what incalculable harm 
her mistake has wrought. ... It has ruined two 


196 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 

lives. Suppose you and I married, and discovered 
later we were unsuited to one another ?” 

“You wouldn’t make a fool of yourself like Mrs. 
Gommet,” he returned with conviction. “You’re not 
her sort. . . . And I’m not like Gommet.” 

“Life might still be as great a tragedy though it 
were lived with outward decency,” she said. 

He stared at her. 

“Look here, Alieta, you drop that tone,” he cried. 
“I don’t know what’s come over you. You used 
to be sweet and kind. . . . Think of me a bit, — you 
ought to. I love you, if ever a man loved a woman. 
See what I’m giving up for you!” 

“What?” Alieta asked in a spiritless voice. “I 
think if you had been ready to give up things for 
me it might have been different. But what are you 
giving up?” 

“I’ve all but quarrelled with my family for you,” 
he answered with his ready flush. “It’s just hell at 
home. ... You should see it.” 

She reached out and touched his sleeve. 

“That isn’t enough,” she said gently. “It doesn’t 
help.” 

“Not enough !” he snorted. “You’d see me in rags, 
I suppose, before you were convinced. What more 
can a man do than quarrel with his parents ? . . . If 
I hadn’t a penny to jingle on a tombstone, it might 
appeal to your unpractical mind as rather fine and 
heroic, but when you tried to live on it you’d have 
graver doubts about matrimony than you entertain at 
present. Don’t be a sentimentalist, Alieta. If you 
trust me, things will pan out all right.” 

“It isn’t only that,” Alieta answered gravely. “I 
think it only right to tell you, Harold. . . . When 
I accepted you I did so knowing very little of men 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 197 

and the world; if you had come to me now my an- 
swer would have been different.” 

“You mean,” he said, and his eyes flamed with 
sudden passion and understanding, “that you’ve seen 
someone else you like?” 

Alieta hesitated. The bright colour came into her 
cheeks, and her eyelids drooped in quick embarrass- 
ment over the shamed eyes. 

“I suppose,” she said very quietly, not denying it, 
“that you have a right to ask that question.” 

“Yes,” he almost shouted, — “and a right to an an- 
swer. . . . Heckraft’s been making love to you, — 
that’s about the size of it. Damn him for a double- 
dyed scoundrel ! — Coming up here and stealing another 
man’s girl because he’s not on the spot.” 

“Don’t!” Alieta rose quickly, and went and stood 
by the mantel with her arm on the low shelf. “You 
make me almost hate you when you talk like that.” 

“Well, but ” he spluttered, and rose too, and 

followed her, standing on the other side of the fire- 
less hearth. “What would you think if I was up 
to jilting you because I’d seen some other girl in 
the interval? Come now, Alieta, be fair. I’ve lived 
for you ever since I knew you — ever since I knew 
you,” he repeated, as though to assure himself as 
much as the girl standing in a listening silence with 
her eyes fixed gravely on his. 

“Just over a year,” she said. 

“Just over a year!” he repeated savagely, and 
added in a tone of fresh aggravation : “I’d have been 
a better man, perhaps, if I’d known you sooner. But 
anyway,” his tone became self-excusing, almost lau- 
datory, “I’ve not been such a bad hat as many an- 
other. And I mean to run straight now — always — 
from to-day, for your sake.” 

Alieta lifted her strained face to his. She did not 


198 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 

understand why he was saying all this. It occurred 
to her as beside the point. She had never supposed 
that he was doing other than run straight. 

“But surely you won’t hold me to my engagement 
after what I have admitted?” she asked. 

“Surely I will,” he answered. “I’m not giving you 
up to Heckraft, nor anyone else. You liked me well 
enough twelve months ago. If things had worked 
smoothly we’d have been married by now. ... By 
God! Alieta, you can’t jack me up for no better rea- 
son than you’ve given.” He leaned towards her sud- 
denly and seized her hands. “If you want to send 
me to the devil you’re going the right way to do it. 
I worship you,” he cried passionately, his voice break- 
ing on a rising sob. “If you send me away, you ruin 
me. . . . Alieta ! — Alieta ! — you won’t break me like 
that?” 

Alieta left her hands within his, and answered noth- 
ing. What was there to say in face of his fierce re- 
fusal to consider her plea? She must leave things 
as they were for a time. At least she had the satis- 
faction of knowing that there was no immediate pros- 
pect of marriage with him. 

Johnson left Odsani that day with black anger in 
his heart, resentful anger against Alieta, and hatred 
of the man who had come between him and the 
woman he was engaged to. It would have given him 
immense satisfaction to have gone forth secretly and 
killed Heckraft; but that game was too dangerous; 
it entailed ugly risks. If only there were some means 
— some means, safe and comfortable for himself — 
of getting rid of the fellow. . . . 

His mind was inflamed with rage, distorted and 
unbalanced with the sense of injury done to himself. 
Something that was his was in danger of being treach- 
erously stolen, and it was up to him to see that the 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND! HILLS 199 

traitor should be punished and the treasure preserved. 

The thought of challenging Heckraft, of having a 
set-to with fists, occurred to him, and was instantly 
rejected. He was not sure that he would get the best 
of it. For a space he considered the idea of horse- 
whipping the manager. It was a time-honoured prac- 
tice, and the dignified thing to do in the circumstances. 
But there again he felt uncertain of his advantage, 
even armed with a sjambok. The manager was not a 
small man. The idea that Johnson had formed of 
him that he was muscular and would probably 
defend himself. The dignity of flogging another man 
depends largely upon whether you succeed. 

And then, with disconcerting suddenness the op- 
portunity to visit his wrath upon the object that ex- 
cited it presented itself. He shot round a bend in 
the road at reckless speed without sounding his hooter, 
and missed by the merest shave the accomplishment 
of his desire to launch Heckraft into eternity at very 
little risk to himself. It took him years to recover 
from the disappointment of that moment, when he 
realised, as soon as he had time to realise anything, 
that had he studied the etiquette of the road and been 
on his right side he must have run down the man- 
ager, who, absorbed in his own thoughts, was riding 
aimlessly with slackened rein, heedless of possible 
traffic on the little frequented road. Heckraft’s 
horse, shying after its habit, unseated him and threw 
him over the bonnet of the car. Johnson stopped the 
car suddenly with a grinding noise, a vicious hope in 
his heart that in skidding through the abrupt applica- 
tion of the brakes he might by good luck strike the 
fallen man. But the luck was all against him. Heck- 
raft scrambled to his feet unhurt, and, obeying his 
first instinct, looked round sharply for his horse, 
while Johnson filled the silence with unprintable 


200 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


words. Finding that his horse had completely disap- 
peared, and catching something of the sense of the 
other man’s highly coloured phrases, he swung round 
again. 

“Are you swearing at me?” he asked. 

Here, ready made, was the opportunity Johnson 
had wished for. What more favourable chance to 
pick a quarrel could any man desire? He had but 
to reply in the affirmative with the addition of fur- 
ther insulting terms, and they would be out in the 
road and at it in earnest. But the contemplation of 
a thing and the reality of it are wholly different. A 
man may be a hero theoretically who in practice 
proves a coward. He surveyed Heckraft critically, 
running a speculative eye over the strong, well-knit 
figure. There was something so deliberately calcu- 
lating in the glance that Heckraft could not fail to 
notice it; he perceived also that the swift scrutiny 
took in, and noted with frank satisfaction, his ban- 
daged right hand. 

Johnson parried the question in a cautious attempt 
to determine beforehand the issue of a possible 
combat. 

“You’ve hurt yourself,” he said. “When was that?” 
* “Oh ! days ago. It’s practically well.” 

This was unsatisfactory. An*old sore is not much 
of a deterrent when a man’s blood is up. 

“You were riding all over the road,” Johnson com- 
plained. “If I hadn’t been jolly smart there would 
have been an accident.” 

“You were so jolly smart that there was an acci- 
dent,” Heckraft retorted. “I suppose you mean, if 
you hadn’t been on your wrong side you would have 
been over me?” 

“Lucky for you, anyway,” Johnson returned. 

He sat back in his seat and surveyed the dust- 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 201 


soiled figure in the road with smouldering animosity. 
It occurred to him that, since he had lost his horse, 
the manager would expect him to take him back in 
the car. Well, he could expect. He would see him 
damned first, and then he wouldn’t. . . . 

“I was on my road to see you,” he remarked with 
the distant manner of one who rebukes a subordinate 
for flagrant neglect of duty. “How is it we haven’t 
been informed of Gommet’s incapacity?” 

Heckraft had expected this, and because of the 
many complications involved, he received it quietly, 
swallowing the insult of the younger man’s manner, 
distasteful though it was. 

“Gommet is only on his flack for a day or two,” he 
said. “By the time I had informed you, and you 
had sent up another man — supposing you preferred 
to do so — he will be about again. In the meanwhile, I 
can manage pretty well.” 

“We ought to have been told,” Johnson persisted, 
returning to his point, unable to subdue his bullying 
propensities, and encouraged by the other’s unex- 
pectedly quiet way of receiving the rebuke. “Who in 
hell are you that you should take it upon yourself to 
manage matters without consulting us? A man has 
been kicked out of his job for less than that.” 

Heckraft’s blood was not of the quality that re- 
mains cool long under provocation. He advanced a 
step. There was something in his eyes and the for- 
ward thrust of his chin which Johnson did not alto- 
gether like the look of. This man was not so easily 
subdued as he had supposed. 

“Look here, Mr. Johnson,” he said, “I don’t know 
quite what you’re after; but I don’t like your tone. 
If you’re spoiling for a row, say so. . . . You 
needn’t entertain scruples on account of my hand; 
it’s quite equal to the job.” 


202 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


Johnson, who had been about to say something 
relative to his objections to Jut a lame man, refrained, 
and instead fell to regarding the speaker with a look 
of cold surprise. 

“Don’t be a fool,” he said sharply. “I’ve no quar- 
rel with you. ... It is, as a matter of fact, my gov- 
ernor’s concern more than mine. I’ll have to report 
to him. . . . And you’ll probably hear further of it 
from him,” he added, as he set the car in motion 
again and drove off. 

“I probably shall hear from him,” Heckraft mused, 
pursuing on foot the road taken by the car. “And 
if you can colour the picture dark enough, it’s quite 
possible that it will be the kick out.” 

He quickened his pace, and his chin shot forward 
again. 

“Well, confound you ! kick,” he muttered. “There’s 
always Nooitgedacht to fall back upon.” 


XXIII 


M AD HANTZ shuffled his way slowly through 
the dust of the road, trailing his rope behind 
him, and leaving a long serpentine impres- 
sion to mark his zigzag upward course. His hirsute 
countenance wore an expression of savage perplexity. 
In some less clouded portion of the darkened mind 
memory was stirring, exciting him to undue efforts at 
thought, such as a brute might show who has been 
taught to perform a trick and is called upon by a 
superior intelligence to make his exhibition. 

What was it the person who travelled rapidly, more 
rapidly than he could when he walked his fastest, 
when he even ran, and who seemed always to be en- 
veloped in a cloud of dust, had said to him? . . . 

He wrinkled his forehead underneath its thatch of 
hair and drew his overhanging brows together in a 
frown so fierce that anyone, meeting him and seeing 
him so, would have flown in terror at his approach. 
A quick, ferocious gleam came into his eyes. The 
person who had stopped and spoken to him had 
talked with him about the Devil. He remembered 
that much. Duivel ! — It was a familiar word. What 
was it he had had to say about the Devil? . . . 

Again the heavy brows were knitted in the unac- 
customed effort to think, and again, quite suddenly, 
and after a long while, came another gleam of recol- 
lection. The person who had talked so understand- 
ingly about the Devil had taken out a handkerchief 
203 


204 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


and bound it about his hand in demonstration of 
what he said. Yes; he remembered now: he had 
spoken of the Devil, and had bound a piece of rag 
about his hand. . . . 

But why had he done that? . . . 

The further effort to think proved too great a 
strain on the dulled intelligence. The transitory 
gleam of understanding vanished, and the darkened 
mind became once more a blank. But the ill work 
had been well accomplished; the dull brain had re- 
ceived its impression; it only needed some further 
sign which would serve to brighten that impression, 
to set working the latent ferocity in the breast of this 
less than brute who once had been a man. 

The link which was to connect the particular and 
definite information with which the madman had been 
furnished with the chain of desire which his unbal- 
anced mind cherished in the altogether praiseworthy 
wish to rid the world of evil, was even then in view. 
Heckraft came swinging along down the hill, and 
seeing Hantz, and recognising in him his silent but 
harmless companion during a lonely vigil, he appre- 
hended no danger from the encounter, and came on 
at a good pace. Hearing footsteps in advance of 
seeing the approach, owing to his habit of keeping 
his gaze fixed earthwards, the madman slowly raised 
his eyes; they reached a point, and were arrested 
there. A sudden gleam of remembrance shot into 
them. Not once did he raise his eyes further than 
Heckraft’s bandaged hand, but with the swift spring 
of some wild animal, he was on him, pinioning him 
with his long powerful arms, pressing upon him with 
his knees, bearing him slowly backwards. 

Heckraft attempted to call for help, in the hope 
that some of his boys might be within hearing and 
come to his aid, but the madman stifled the cry be- 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 205 

fore ever it reached his lips, choking it with his talon- 
like, dirty fingers so that it broke in a gurgle in his 
throat. The horrible part to Heckraft, as he felt 
himself shaken backwards and forwards in the power- 
ful grip like a reed moved by the wind, was that his 
assailant never uttered a sound. It was like being 
gripped by Death himself, Death in a horrible, vin- 
dictive guise, repellant and unutterably evil, without 
promise of anything beyond. So might the most 
hopeless of sinners feel, plunged in the worst of in- 
fernos. 

He struggled futilely, but fiercely. The one domi- 
nant thought that obtruded itself insistently, in spite 
of his anguish, was that he must fight for his life, 
that, foregone though the result of so unequal a con- 
test was, he must prolong the agony until he could 
struggle no more. Vainly but furiously he strove 
with the madman, who, it appeared to him, was climb- 
ing up him, clutching and climbing, with gripping 
hands and knees that pressed on his chest. His chief 
thought was to protect his throat; that was the big 
necessity, to prevent himself from being strangled. 
He caught at the dirty, hairy wrists and dragged at 
them, till he felt his resistance weakening, and real- 
ised despairingly that the end was near. The world 
which had seemed so sunny and bright a short while 
before, suddenly darkened. In his dazed and bewil- 
dered condition it seemed to him that he had been 
struggling for hours and that night must surely be 
advancing. 

They were near the edge of the path. Below the 
road was a short drop, and then a steep but easy slope 
of some hundred feet. If only by good luck he could 
manage to roll them both over, it was possible that 
those gripping fingers, which were strangling the life 
out of him, might relax. But the madman also 


206 valley of a thousand hills 


seemed aware of that pitfall; for he resisted the 
other’s efforts and worked more to the middle of the 
road. 

He had got the Devil at last, the Devil who was to 
be recognised by the innocent looking, but unholy, 
linen he wore bound about his hand. The mission of 
his life was to slay the Devil. It was to him a great 
satisfaction that the Devil was not easy to kill, — all 
the surer proof, if he wanted proof, that this was he. 

And then unexpectedly while he pressed harder on 
his foe, pressed so that he bore him earthward, and 
had him helpless and at his mercy, with his long bony 
fingers on the exposed throat, a tobacco pouch, with 
some long strands of golden tobacco hanging untidily 
from it, fell from the pocket of Heckraft’s rent coat. 
The madman saw it, and in a moment his mood 
changed. His fury of homicidal rage died out. Like 
a beggar swooping for coppers, or a greedy child 
scrambling for sweets, he sprawled across his victim 
and clutched at the coveted weed. He grasped the 
pouch, and then as though fearful of having to share, 
or at least to struggle for the possession of his prize, 
he removed himself to a short distance and sat in the 
dust at the roadside devouring the tobacco hungrily, 
as he had done on the night that Heckraft met him 
on the veld. Whether some wave of thought put into 
action by the taste of the weed set the feeble mind 
working back to that former occasion is doubtful; 
but ever and again he raised his eyes furtively from 
the pouch he held and was eagerly tearing open, and 
turned them shiftily upon the inert figure lying in the 
road. He looked like a large sly ape consciously steal- 
ing while his master sleeps. 

When he had finished the tobacco, he flung away 
the pouch as far as he could fling it, as he had done 
before, and rose. Then, while he stood winding the 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 207 

rope, which he had dropped and since recovered, 
about his wrists, and eyeing with a puzzled, suspicious 
scrutiny the huddled figure in the road, another ex- 
traordinary event befel. Someone else, travelling rap- 
idly in a cloud of dust, appeared in view. He re- 
called vaguely that before someone who travelled in 
this fashion had stopped and hailed him, and troubled 
him with much talking; and unmindful to be again 
harassed after this manner he caught up his rope and 
turned aside from the road, making rapidly for the 
open country and the peaceful solitude of the valley. 
It made his head whirl when persons who travelled 
rapidly stopped and plagued him with numberless 
questions. 

And he had a long way to go yet if he were to find 
the Devil before night. If he were to find the Devil. 
. . . He paused irresolute. He had found the Devil. 
He had killed him. He laughed aloud vacantly. 
Then he went on. The world was full of devils. 
His mission still remained. 

The second car, the appearance of which had so 
disconcerted Hantz, stopped when it came upon the 
obstruction in the road, and Doctor Seely, alighting 
and approaching the prostrate man, bent over him to 
discover what was amiss. He immediately recog- 
nised Heckraft, and his face expressed his surprise. 
Prior to going down on his knees beside him, he had 
seen, and looked after with a suspicious scrutiny for 
the purpose of future identification, the tall, hurrying 
figure of Hantz as it disappeared across the veld. 

Heckraft had struck his head against a stone in 
falling and was temporarily stunned. He came to as 
the medical man stooped over him, and struggled into 
a sitting posture. For the moment the immediate 
past was wiped out from his memory. The sight of 
the standing motor, in his dazed condition, took him 


2o8 valley of a thousand hills 


back to the earlier mishap. He put his hand to the 
back of his head. The stone had been a sharp one 
and had made an odd triangular scalp wound, noth- 
ing worse. His hand when he looked at it was blood- 
stained. 

“Always fall on my head,” he grumbled. . . . 
“That’s the second time that brute has thrown me.” 

Then he stared at the doctor, and slowly memory 
returned. 

“Oh, Lord !” he groaned, and looked about him anx- 
iously. “Where is he?” he asked. 

Doctor Seely made a backward motion with his 
head in the direction Hantz had taken. 

“Gone,” he answered, and added: “Handled you 
a bit roughly, eh? . . . Til take you back in the 
car. I was on my way to visit Gommet.” 

He helped Heckraft to rise. 

“Shaky?” he said encouragingly, as Heckraft stood 
unsteadily upon his feet. “That will soon pass.” 

“Shaky!” Heckraft shook himself free, and stood 
firmer. “It was the nearest thing to being murdered 
I hope I’ll ever experience. It was like a terrier with 
a rat. . . . Never felt such a babe in my life before. 
And she said that fellow was harmless.” 

“Who said?” 

Heckraft saw fit to ignore the question. 

“Chaps like that ought not to be allowed to run 
about loose,” he complained. “Aren’t there any lu- 
nacy laws in this blessed country?” 

“Of course. But in these out of the way places 
they are not so strictly enforced as they should be. 
And, ’pon my word! I’d have answered for Hantz 
myself. He’s been about here for years and never 
molested anyone. What were you doing to throw 
him into a rage?” 

Heckraft looked justly indignant. 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 209 


“I was walking along the road, as anyone might,” 
he answered. “I saw him coming; but — dash it all! 
— I had heard he was considered harmless. . . . And 
I had spent a night in his company once, when I got 
lost in the veld. I didn’t enjoy that experience par- 
ticularly, but he was quiet enough. If I’d guessed 
there was a chance of his attacking me I should have 
been prepared. They told me he was looking for the 
Devil.” 

He broke off abruptly, and stared thoughtfully 
down the road. Certain words Johnson had spoken 
on that occasion, when he, with Alieta, had taken him 
up in the car, jerked themselves into his mind. It 
was odd, he reflected, that he should recall those 
words now; there had been something prophetic in 
them: “It would have been an awkward thing for 
Heckraft if Iiantz had mistaken him for the object 
of his search.” Possibly Hantz had mistaken him 
for the Devil, and it had been awkward, very. 

“I wonder!” he said, and struggled with the doubt 
in his mind. “Oh, rot!” he ejaculated softly. “That 
would be a bit too low, even for him.” 

Doctor Seely looked puzzled. 

“Too low for whom?” he asked. 

“I fancy lunacy must be infectious,” Heckraft re- 
sponded with a brief laugh, “or that knock on the 
head has dazed me; I’m drivelling.” 

He got into the car, and Doctor Seely motored 
him to Gommet’s house. Heckraft expressed his in- 
tention of going straight to the hotel, but the doctor 
quashed this idea. 

“You are coming inside,” he said. “You may not 
be aware of the fact, but you look as though you had 
taken part in a prize fight. . . . There’s work for 
me.” 

“I know I’m a beastly exhibition,” Heckraft an- 


2io VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


swered. “That’s why I’d rather go on to the hotel. 
I can walk it all right.” 

“I daresay. But it will save time, and be much 
more satisfactory if you come inside.” 

Doctor Seely quite understood that Heckraft’s re- 
luctance arose from his dislike to be seen in his pres- 
ent condition by Alieta Van der Vyver; but, having 
passed the romantic age himself, the expediency of 
getting Heckraft inside and his hurts attended to 
with the certainty of a sufficient supply of boiling 
water and other requisites, occurred to him as of 
greater importance; and he overruled his objections. 

It was the greatest surprise he remembered to have 
ever experienced when, on entering the house, fol- 
lowed reluctantly by Heckraft wearing the appear- 
ance of some sheepish malefactor, he was confronted 
in the passage by Mrs. Gommet, who looked at him 
uncertainly, looked past him at Heckraft, whbse pres- 
ence there, as well as his condition, needed for her 
some explanation, and then in a sudden quick embar- 
rassment allowed her eyes to fall. 

Doctor Seely was so taken by surprise that for 
fully half a minute his ready tactfulness deserted 
him, and he stared at her in a wonderment too com- 
plete for words. Heckraft, in his rear, grew increas- 
ingly uncomfortable. He knew who this woman was 
without being told; he jumped to it instinctively, and 
without the faintest doubt that he was right. He did 
not pause to wonder how she came there ; it was 
sufficient for him that there she was. Without wait- 
ing for the silence to be broken, he turned about and 
bolted. Doctor Seely, recalled perhaps by the action 
of his going, though he was too genuinely astonished 
to be consciously aware of his departure — he had, as 
a matter of fact, forgotten him altogether — advanced 
suddenly and gripped Mrs. Gommet’s hand. 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 21 1 


“This is the pleasantest surprise I have ever had 
in my life,” he said with quiet sincerity. “You have 
come at the best time possible, Mrs. Gommet. And 
I am sure all your freinds will be as glad as I am to 
welcome you home.” 

Would they? . . . 

Mrs. Gommet raised a guilt-conscious countenance 
to his. A certain defiance which had shown in her 
manner at his entry gave place to a swift look of 
gratitude. Unaccountably at that moment there came 
into her mind, and lingered there for long afterwards, 
the words: “Let him who has never sinned be the 
one to cast the first stone.” 


XXIV 


I T is not always in this world of unequal chances 
that a man reaps as he has sown. Though fairly 
sound logic that what one puts into life one takes 
out of it, in many cases — and this is more particu- 
larly noticeable in undeveloped countries where the 
man of greater enterprise and fewer scruples forges 
rapidly ahead — retribution does not necessarily fol- 
low with that fine sense of poetic justice which the 
moralist always hopes for. But in the case of Har- 
old Johnson it rather looked as if Justice had taken 
off her bandage and ‘was intent only on a perfect 
adjustment of the scales. 

To quote himself, Johnson had been a fool. He 
had opened the door to his own undoing. A woman 
spurned makes always a deadly enemy, and he had in 
this wise earned the hatred of Mrs. Gommet. It was 
fairly obvious to him that she was bent on making 
things unpleasant. He had received a letter from 
her. It was, as a matter of fact, in answer to a com- 
munication from him. Certain paragraphs in that 
letter were strangely disturbing to him. He had never 
in all his life felt so vindictive, and at the same time 
so impotent. She had him ,as entirely at her mercy 
as the victor who binds his captive to the wheel of 
his chariot. It was his own simile, nor did the lapse 
into ancient Roman history strike him as absurd. He 
almost felt the bonds galling his flesh. If it had not 
been for the discomforting recollection that Alieta 
212 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 213 


had already, for no apparent reason, demanded to be 
released from her engagement, he would have ignored 
Mrs. Gommet’s letter and silently defied her to do 
her worst; but knowing how insecure was his pres- 
ent foothold, he trembled to think that anyone should 
possess the power to weaken the tottering supports 
upon which he stood. 

He read, and re-read, that disturbing letter, ponder- 
ing over certain paragraphs in it, cogitating in savage 
perplexity how he could square the writer, how cir- 
cumvent her so that, while seeming to acquiesce in 
her stipulations, he might yet get his own way despite 
of her. . . . 

If only Alieta had married him secretly! ... If 
only she would consent to a secret marriage now! 
. . . But he knew, without appealing to her again, 
that Alieta would never agree to that. 

It was probably due to the fact that Mrs. Gommet 
refused to accept anything further from him in any 
form that Johnson realised how complete was the 
break in their relations. There was an uncompromis- 
ing finality in the tone of the letter that was pecu- 
liarly convincing even to a man who in such matters 
was fairly obtuse. She would have nothing of him, 
not even compensation; and his offer to her had been 
generous according to his lights. 

“I am going back to drab respectability,” she wrote, 
“not because I like it, but because I can’t help my- 
self. Everyone here is so kind to me ; they are forcing 
me to be decent-living as surely as if, had they 
been otherwise, they would have driven me to the 
other extreme. I have no choice. I shall spend the 
rest of my life here among wattles, doing my duty 
by Joe, although I know I shall hate it. . . .” 

And further on: — 

“I don’t want to see you ever again. If you had 


214 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 

been faithful to me, Td have lived for you and given 
up everything else. But your sort are never faithful. 
If you haven’t been faithful to the girl you intend 
to marry, what will you be when she is your wife? 
You shall never marry Alieta, — about that I am fully 
determined. She is too good for you. She is too 
good for me to tell her — unless you force me to tell 
her — what you are. You must give her up, and I 
will keep silent. If you won’t consent to this, if there 
is no other way in which to prevent her marriage 
with you, I will confide to her the story of the past 
five years. . . 

What, in the face of a beastly, vindictive threat 
like that, was a man to do ? . . . 

Johnson crushed the letter into a ball. Then he 
smoothed it out again, folded it neatly and locked it 
away in a drawer. Perhaps it would be advisable to 
keep it. In consideration of the fact that it con- 
tained a point blank refusal of his really handsome 
offer to recognise her claim upon him, it might be 
useful to have it to refer to in the event of future 
complications. With a beast like Gommet a man 
might be let in for blackmail. Nevertheless, he de- 
cided on reflection, he would not show up particu- 
larly well if he were called upon to produce that 
letter in evidence. The writer had conceived it in 
the ill-considered, nasty spirit of a female cat. 

Johnson was dining that evening at the Raths, very 
much against his inclination, nor had the receipt of 
Mrs. Gommet’s letter added to the festiveness of his 
mood. The Raths had been back in Durban nearly 
a month, and during the whole time he had managed, 
against the combined scheming of his parents, and the 
persistent kindness of the Raths, to avoid meeting 
them. But there is a limit to the most ingenious 
mind in the manufacture of plausible excuses; and 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 215 


to the extreme gratification of his mother, and to his 
own chagrin, he had been pressed into attending this 
dinner party in honour of the coming of age of Muriel 
Rath. He had chafed before at the thought of going, 
now, with this new worry to harass him, the former 
disinclination was aggravated till it assumed a sense 
of personal injury at what he styled the indecent per- 
sistence with which these people pestered him. Their 
purpose was as obvious as, in view of his reluctance, 
it was indelicate. 

It was a further source of irritation when, having 
arrived at the house, he discovered that for him was 
reserved the honour of taking Muriel in to dinner. 
This distinction was all the more marked on account 
of the large number of guests, and the fact that he 
was of lesser importance than many present. But, 
as Sir George told him when he graciously informed 
him of his good luck, — 

“You and Muriel are such old friends. I know 
without consulting her that my arrangement will meet 
with her approval.” 

He felt as though he could have sworn at his ur- 
bane host. 

And in a distant part of the room Mrs. Johnson 
was confiding to Lady Rath, a comfortable, homely 
old soul, who was devoted to her daughter and saw 
young Johnson only with her daughter’s eyes, that 
Harold had so eagerly been looking forward to that 
evening, and had talked of no one but Muriel all the 
way in the carriage. She tactfully refrained from 
repeating what Harold had said. 

Muriel Rath was not pretty. She was small and 
insignificant, with bright, bird-like eyes, and a sallow 
complexion; but to-night, with a flush lent by pleas- 
urable excitement, and perfectly gowned in a dainty 
white Paris frock, her abundant dark hair becomingly 


216 valley of a thousand hills 


dressed, she looked distinctly attractive, — a dainty 
little girl, with the soft round contours of youth add- 
ing their inimitable charm. And she was so flatter- 
ingly and sincerely impressed with every banal utter- 
ance that her companion made, so untiring in her 
efforts to amuse him, and so pathetically grateful for 
the slightest response. In spite of his vexation John- 
son found her society decidedly soothing. Following 
his recent rebuffs, this almost dog-like homage was 
gratifying. It helped in some degree to restore his 
lost sense of dignity. Mrs. Gommet’s letter had made 
him feel — although he tried to bluff it — rather like a 
whipped cur. 

“So you are an independent young woman now,” 
he observed banteringly, — “privileged to defy author- 
ity and kick over the traces in any way that seems 
agreeable to you. What are you going to do with 
your liberty ?” 

She puckered her brows. 

“I don’t think it makes much difference, really ” 
she said, in the earnest way she had, which was 
peculiarly irritating to him, of giving importance to 
every triviality. “Do you?” 

“Well, if I had your income, I rather fancy it 
would,” he answered. 

“Oh! but you are enormously rich,” she said, 
smiling. 

His brow darkened. 

“‘That’s what many people think,” he returned. 
“As a matter of fact, I’m a pauper.” 

“A pauper with a princely income.” 

“A pauper with a princely wage,” he corrected. 
“There’s a big distinction. Wages are liable to be 
stopped.” 

She laughed, imagining that he was joking. 

“When you are reduced to penury,” she said, the 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 2i? 

smile still hovering about her lips, “remember that 
I’m an independent person of charitable instincts.” 

“All right,” he said, “that’s a bargain,” and turned 
his attention to the next course. 

He was almost sorry when the ladies left the 
dining-room. She had made him forget things, had 
reinstated him in his own regard. 

“I’ll see you later,” he said, as she left him. “Keep 
a corner for me.” 

She nodded a smiling acquiescence. That was the 
happiest moment of an altogether happy day. 

The men closed in and plunged straightway, as 
Johnson had known they would plunge, into a dis- 
cussion on the Indian trouble, which from a ferment- 
ing and ever widening discontent was gathering rap- 
idly to a head. Many of the men present employed 
Indian labour. Sir George Rath, having large in- 
terests in sugar plantations, and another man who 
had practically the control of the sugar industry in 
Natal, took active parts in the discussion. 

“The biggest mistake,” an outsider broke in on 
the somewhat bitter discussion, voicing the opinion 
of the disinterested party, “was getting Indian labour 
over in the first instance. The beggars are overrun- 
ning Natal. It’s appalling as one travels on the line 
to see the numbers of fruit farms these chaps own. 
They’ll possess half Natal in time. Their one idea is 
to acquire land. They can live cheaper than a Kaffir 
even, and they save, which a Kaffir can’t. Then they 
purchase ground and settle. They’ll have a monopoly 
of the fruit trade before long. Kick ’em out, I say, 
like they kicked out the Chinese, before greater harm 
is done.” 

“Can’t spare them,” stuck in Sir George. “How 
are you going to replace them in the labour market?” 

“By employing the native.” The speaker’s tone 


218 valley of a thousand hills 


lacked confidence, because he knew what the answer 
would be. 

‘‘That’s been tried and found no use. The Kaffir 
won’t stick to his job.” 

“They manage with them on the mines. . . . One 
ought to give the preference to the native,” a recent 
comer to the country opined. 

The man with the big sugar interests looked across 
at the speaker with the indulgence of experience for 
the assurance which a want of knowledge of his sub- 
ject gives the impulsive reformer. 

“They manage with them on the mines,” he repeated ' 
slowly, and blew a succession of smoke rings into 
the air. — “Yes.” He took the cigar from his mouth. 
“Because they lock them up in compounds,” he added, 
as though that explained everything, — as it does to 
one intimate with the African character. 

The newcomer was athirst for information. 

“Do you mean to say if those chaps weren’t strictly 
confined they wouldn’t stick to their job?” he asked. 

“I mean that — yes. A few might, perhaps. But 
the Kaffir can’t stick to his job. He is like an animal 
in its wild state, always on the move. He can’t con- 
centrate. Besides, work on the mines is altogether 
different from cane growing, or barking wattles ; one 
requires muscular strength, the other calls for skilled 
labour. ... No; I don’t see how we’re going to do 
without the Indian.” 

“Well, I jolly well know,” put in Harold Johnson, 
speaking for the first time, “if our fellows strike, I’ll 
get a gang of boys from Umlaas and let them do the 
work. No taking back of strikers for us.” 

Umlaas was one of the two large Kaffir locations 
close to Drummond. If the native labour was not 
equal to the Indian at least the supply was to hand. 

“You can afford to do that,” Sir George inter- 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 219 


posed. “But for those among us whose interests de- 
pend largely on Indian labour, it’s another matter.” 

“What’s the particular grievance?” the Englishman 
inquired, realising that among this gathering of 
Natalians his home-born theories would not go down ; 
no one seemed to wish to hear them. 

“It’s this new poll tax that is the big trouble. It 
hits the old residents in the country pretty hard. 
Three pounds a head is rather stiff for some of these 
fellows, and they resent being taxed for living in the 
country.” 

“Well, but isn’t it rather rough?” the Englishman 
demanded. 

The sugar magnate smiled dryly. 

“We don’t want ’em to live in the country,” he 
replied. “We’d like to ship them back when they’re 
through with their indentures; but the beggars won’t 
go back. The poll tax was an ill-advised move on the 
part of the government, conceived with the idea of 
inducing them to return ; instead it has served to give 
them a grievance. They had no real grievance before. 
The Coolie is better treated here than in his own 
country, and he knows it. It’s the Arab merchants 
who are making the mischief and stirring the Coolies 
to revolt. They want full citizenship. They haven’t 
citizenship in their own country, and they can’t have 
it here. In consideration of their numbers it would 
be absurd to grant it.” 

“Oh! it’s a big muddle, and it’s going to be worse 
yet,” someone else observed. “We may look for 
more trouble on the Rand before long.” 

“If the government takes a firm stand,” Sir George 
Rath struck in with a view to preventing the conver- 
sation growing too serious, “we’ll weather this storm 
all right. But the labour question is going to be the 
big question in Africa within the next few years. . . . 


220 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


You study the subject, Harold, and well get you re- 
turned to represent us.” 

A laugh went round the table. It occurred to the 
Englishman that the red-faced, scowling young Colo- 
nial, who talked so bombastically of handling strik- 
ers was rather typical of the modern taste in candi- 
dates during crises calling for tactful and delicate 
handling. It is possibly this peculiarity of selection 
which makes the pursuit of politics so extremely ele- 
vating. 

Johnson muttered something about having no stom- 
ach for politics, which nobody heeded, and again re- 
lapsed into silence. The talk had recalled his annoy- 
ances, and set his thoughts harking back. He was 
thinking regretfully of Alieta, of how altogether al- 
luring she was, and how she would shine in this mixed 
assembly like an empress among commoners. Then 
his mind turned upon another woman of an alto- 
gether different type, who had seemed to him in his 
callow days the most delightful and desirable person 
in the world, — the auburn haired, soulless little crea- 
ture who had written him that vindictive letter. He 
hated her now. He wondered at himself that he had 
ever found her attractive. 

And then something someone was saying recalled 
him with a start to the present, to the consciousness 
of the indifferent, politely-bored faces of the men 
who lingered round the table in compliment to the 
host’s vintage rather than in pleasurable enjoyment 
of the talk. All that they were saying now had been 
said before in offices and at the Club. 

“Wasn’t the fellow who got mauled by a madman 
at Drummond your manager?” someone asked John- 
son senior. 

“Yes.” 

Sir George Rath, who was interested in Heckraft 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 221 


from a personal knowledge of him and his affairs, 
continued the subject. 

“It’s scandalous that a dangerous lunatic should 
be at large/’ he said. 

“Well, they’ve shut him up now.” 

“When the mischief’s done.” 

“Oh! Heckraft wasn’t hurt, — not badly. Things 
might have been worse.” 

Sir George said something more, which young 
Johnson did not catch in the hum of general talk. 
His thoughts again reverted to his own immediate 
concerns. “Heckraft wasn’t hurt. . . . Things 
might have been worse.” In his opinion they were 
as bad as they could be. Luck was dead against him, 
that was evident. Mad Hantz had caught on to his 
instructions and bungled the job. A man should do 
his own dirty work, when there is dirty work to be 
done. 


XXV 


T HE return of Mrs. Gommet had created its 
little stir in her circumscribed world, had 
called forth a few surprised remarks, a few 
ill-natured comments, which had been qualified later 
by a spirit of kindly tolerance that had found ex- 
cuses for the wife as readily, perhaps more readily, 
than it had found pity for the deserted husband. 
The excitement of Gommet’s accident, the greater 
excitement of his wife’s return, soon simmered down ; 
and life in the house of the engineer, save for a few 
radical changes, went back to the quiet routine, not of 
the bachelor establishment, but of the more system- 
atic comfort of Mrs. Gommet’s rule. 

One of the first changes that marked Mrs. Gom- 
met’s return was the departure of Rudgubadi. Rud- 
gubadi realised from the outset, with quick feminine 
intuition, that the coming of this missis portended 
greater things than the advent of the missis with the 
hair like the mimosa blooms, and the air of quiet 
authority, who had assumed control of things with- 
out usurping rights. This new missis wore an air of 
authority also, an authority that was autocratic, to 
which no limit could be set. Rudgubadi knew, with- 
out having things explained to her, that this missis 
had come to stay, that her coming boded no good to 
herself. She thought about the matter seriously, and 
then conferred with her nephew. 

“This missis is the Sahib’s missis,” she said. “She 
remains.” 


222 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 223 


“What then?” asked Mambersad, with his eyes on 
his aunt’s inscrutable face. Mambersad would as 
readily take his orders from this missis as from his 
aunt. But the woman would not have it so. 

“It is written,” she returned, in the far away tone 
of the seer, and fixed her .burning glance on Mamber- 
sad’s wondering countenance. “I go with my people. 
... It is written.” 

Mambersad looked troubled. He was very content 
where he was, but he knew that Rudgubadi would 
not allow him to remain. If she elected to follow 
her people she would force him to go with her. He 
was young, but he had listened to the talk at Mafuza’s 
kraal, and he understood that passive resistance meant 
much weary marching, and perhaps an empty stom- 
ach. He eyed Rudgubadi askance. 

“I stay,” he muttered obstinately. 

She turned upon him wrathfully. 

“Little pig!” she cried. “Son of an Infidel! . . . 
Would you become a traitor to your own people?” 

“There is plenty rice in Natal,” he answered sul- 
kily. “I stay.” 

But Rudgubadi’s quick ear detected that, though 
he still spoke with quiet obstinacy, his resolve was 
weakening. She said no more. She knew, as he 
knew, that when the time came he would go. 

As a matter of fact, he did go. Rudgubadi and 
her nephew were among those passive resisters who 
followed their leader Gandhi, in protest against their 
grievances, and actually crossed the border and en- 
tered the Transvaal. They drifted back eventually, 
when the futile demonstration, which threw so many 
Indians out of work, and gained Gandhi a fleeting 
notoriety and a brief incarceration, was over; but 
neither of them returned to Drummond; and Mam- 
bersad, having suffered through his aunt’s influence, 


224 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


took the opportunity to lose her on the march back; 
and discovered in the course of time, as many people 
have discovered, that an entire absence of relations 
proves helpful, rather than a deterrent, to a prosper- 
ous and peaceful journey through life. We choose 
our friends, our relations are thrust upon us, and, as 
in Mambersad’s case, they not infrequently assume a 
quite unwarrantable right to interfere in our affairs. 

Gommet was about again long before the Indian 
trouble reached a head. He appeared, save for occa- 
sional moments of brooding depression, quietly happy 
in the return of the one woman he had loved, and 
still loved, despite the ugly fact of those five years 
of separation which each had agreed should remain 
a closed chapter in their lives. Gommet in forgiv- 
ing his wife had wiped the affair out as though it had 
never been. He invited neither explanation nor con- 
fession. He simply refused to speak about it. For- 
giveness was necessary on both sides, and it was best 
to forget. 

The moods of depression were probably the result 
as much of his illness as of mental worry. As an 
evidence of that illness he carried about, and would 
always carry, an ugly scar, a scar which was pecu- 
liarly noticeable on the long, thin, brown throat. 
Gommet never wore any collar but the low, turned 
down collar of his shirt. 

Mrs. Gommet’s eyes had a habit of fastening them- 
selves on this scar, at first in shuddering aversion, 
but later, as they grew familiar with the sight, in a 
kind of fascinated wonder. Often when she looked 
at it she would make an excuse of fetching some- 
thing, and passing behind his chair, would touch his 
hair or his hand in a half furtive caress. 

That was the pleasant side of the picture, as Heck- 
raft, who was back in his place, saw it. There were 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 225 


frequent lapses into peevish irritability, and as time 
went on and Gommet grew quite strong again, this 
wifely devotion, so good to see, became much more 
rare. Mrs. Gommet’s inherent coquetry bubbled to 
the surface, the dregs of frivolity in her nature which 
under certain conditions came to the top like scum, 
were no less there because for a while her undeniable 
better qualities kept them under. She attempted to 
flirt with Heckraft. An idea that the manager was 
in love with her grew in her foolish little brain. She 
observed that whenever she caressed her husband in 
that pretty, impulsive, shy way of hers, Heckraft in- 
variably made some pretext of leaving them alone to- 
gether. She misconstrued his motive, which was actu- 
ated by a sympathetic consideration for Gommet, who 
after the lean years had come upon the good; she 
imagined that every sign of tenderness between her- 
self and her husband was a stab in Heckraft’s breast, 
and she often “stabbed” him deliberately in pursuance 
of a game in which she invariably found amusement. 
Life was not so unutterably dull, even on a wattle 
plantation, when there was someone eating his heart 
out in a hopeless passion for herself. Let him love 
her. . . . Why shouldn’t he? . . . In her determi- 
nation to walk thenceforward solely along the straight 
path, it was quite safe for both. She would be a 
moral influence in his life, — his desired, unattainable 
star. . . . Her undereducated, sordid little mind was 
so overcrowded with vain, sentimental rubbish of 
this nature that a certain common ^ense with which 
she was less generously endowed was apt to get 
pushed into the background, so almost asphyxiated 
beneath the general disorder, that it was not easily 
brought to the front, nor had it sufficient strength to 
push its way there unaided through the indulged 
philosophy of a degenerate intelligence. 


226 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


Had Mrs. Gommet’s common sense struggled more 
frequently into the light she must have realised her 
mistake. Heckraft, far from being in love with her, 
did not even like her. He felt constrained in her 
society, and particularly disliked to be left alone with 
her. He was not conscious of the game she was 
playing; it was possibly too feminine for him to have 
understood; but the subtle change in her bearing 
towards him when they were alone, disconcerted him 
oddly; it was all the more embarrassing because it 
was too subtle to define. He regretted — not Mrs. 
Gommet’s return; he was glad of that on Gommet’s 
account ; the man was so supremely happy in his wife 
— he regretted his share in Nooitgedacht. Had Mrs. 
Gommet figured in the scene earlier he would not 
have entered into that partnership. And there were 
other reasons why the prospect of living at. Drum- 
mond no longer appealed to him. 

The purchase of Nooitgedacht was, although not 
an unqualified joy, a source of pleasurable anticipa- 
tion to Mrs. Gommet. If she had to live on a wattle 
plantation, she preferred to live on their own prop- 
erty. It agreed no longer with her sense of fitness 
that her husband should work on Johnson’s estate. 

She drove over with Gommet to inspect the prop- 
erty, and expressed her entire approval of the house, 
which was larger and altogether prettier than the 
one they lived in. She would have liked to move in 
at once, and said so. 

The commodious mud and wattle huts which Gom- 
met had planned for himself, and which were then in 
the process of erection, well within sight of the house, 
puzzled her. She demanded an explanation. They 
spoilt the harmony of the view. Gommet, who was 
busy training a creeper about the stoep, explained 
that he had had them built for his own use. 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 227 

“You see,” he said, “I thought Tony would have 
the house.” 

“But why?” she asked quickly, breaking off a 
branch of francesia from a bush near the path, and 
smelling the sweet scented flowers. “There’s room 
for both.” 

“Yes.” Gommet looked up. “But Tony will want 
a house to himself when he marries,” he said. 

Mrs. Gommet had her back to the speaker. She 
bent her head over the flowers she held and buried 
her face in them. 

“I didn’t know — there was any thought of that,” 
she returned slowly. “Is he engaged?” 

“Not exactly. But he’s very much in love.” 

“Who with?” 

“Alieta.” 

“Alieta!” Mrs. Gommet’s voice was sharp with 
surprise and incredulity. Many conflicting emotions 
warred with each other for mastery, but vanity con- 
quered eventually. She absolutely refused to enter- 
tain so ridiculous an idea. “She told me herself, she 
is engaged to Harold Johnson. You must be mis- 
taken,” she declared. 

“She may have told you that. . . . Anyway, she 
cares for Tony, and he’s pretty badly hit. So I take 
it there’ll be a wedding, and it won’t be Johnson’s. 
Don’t speak of this, though.” 

Slowly Mrs. Gommet began pulling to pieces the 
scented petals of the francesia. Finally she crushed 
the spray in her hand, and flung it away pettishly. 

“Of course not,” she answered. And then asked 
abruptly: “Why?” 

“Well, it’s hanging fire just now.” 

A faint smile curved her lips. She believed that she 
understood. She glanced quickly at her husband. 
He was still busy with the creeper he was training 


228 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


to beautify their future home. His expression was 
intent and sublimely satisfied. The smile on her lips 
deepened. 

“Anyway, they are not going to have our house,” 
she remarked. 

She stepped up to the stoep. Gommet left his 
work, and joined her with a chuckle of delight. 

“You like the house?” he said, and slipped a hand 
within her arm. “I’m so glad. ... I wish now I’d 
gone in on my own. I could easily have raised the 
money. . . . Only I didn’t know — and Tony seemed 
keen on it too.” 

“Oh ! it’s just as well as it is,” she answered, think- 
ing how intolerably dull it would be out there with- 
out the manager to flirt with. A woman could not be 
expected to find the sole society of her husband per- 
ennially satisfying. 

Gommet reflected. 

“Perhaps I’ll be able to buy him out later,” he said 
with cheery optimism. 

Mrs. Gommet made no response to this. Her mind 
was busy with other matters. She was thinking of a 
letter which she had written to Johnson in which she 
had told him he should not marry Alieta. . . . Why 
had she written that? .... What did it matter to 
her whom Alieta married? Almost at that moment 
she hated Alieta. Alieta had taken Harold Johnson 
from her. She had forgiven that because the theft 
had been unconscious, and the girl had approached 
her with a generous kindness at a moment when most 
people would have held aloof. Yes ; she could forgive 
that. But this deliberate attempt to win the love of 
another man when she was already engaged was con- 
duct she found it less easy to excuse; there was a 
quality of meanness about it. By an odd twist of 
conscience, Mrs. Gommet saw herself by comparison 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 229 


in the favourable light of a woman who would refuse 
to stoop to so petty a level. She felt more than ever 
called upon to act as Heckraft’s guardian angel. A 
resolve to protect him from the Dutch girl’s wiles 
formed itself in her mind. 

She freed her arm from Gommet’s. 

“Go on with your gardening,” she said; “I am 
going inside out of the glare.” 

She wanted to be alone. Joe’s simple pleasure in 
everything accorded ill with her mood. She turned 
round and waved to him from the doorway, and 
Gommet, who had felt slightly rebuffed, suddenly 
smiled. He continued to smile after she had passed 
inside the house, and he had gone back to his work 
in the sunshine below the stoep. 


XXVI 


M RS. GOMMET quite suddenly and unexpect- 
edly took to calling Heckraft by his Christian 
name. He was rather surprised at this, but 
beyond the feeling of mild wonderment it did not 
interest him. Gommet called him Tony, so perhaps 
it was natural that Mrs. Gommet should fall into the 
habit. 

“It’s such an uncommon name,” she said. “I like 
it.” 

She had said the same to her husband in regard 
to his name in the early days before he became her 
husband. Heckraft did not receive the compliment 
with the delight which Gommet had shown. 

“It always strikes me as a fool of a name,” he an- 
swered, surveying her dispassionately. “They gave 
it to me out of compliment to an old man who was 
expected to leave me a fortune, and didn’t.” 

“How horrid of him!” she exclaimed. 

“Well, I don’t know. . . . One can so easily avoid 
those kind of disappointments by not looking for 
benefits.” 

“Were you disappointed?” she asked. 

Heckraft laughed. 

“I was a bit sick at being saddled with his name 
to no purpose,” he replied. 

Besides her liking for his name, Mrs. Gommet re- 
vealed a genuine love for his music. Whenever she 
could persuade him, and he was not usually difficult 
230 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 231 


to persuade, she kept him playing to her hour after 
hour. She liked best to sit in the dusk and listen, 
and forgetful of her surroundings, weave an imagin- 
ary setting for the scene in which Gommet, smoking 
his homely briar as was his invariable custom, seldom 
figured. She usually sat framed in the opening of 
the window, with her small pointed chin uplifted, 
supported on the back of her hand, her gaze on the 
purple void. She rightly supposed the pose to be 
effective. But the man for whom she posed looked 
beyond her, always peering into the gathering mists 
for the dearly loved form which now never came, as 
he drew his bow across the quivering strings and 
played with his soul in his music to the woman who 
carried his heart in the warm shelter of her bosom. 

“I wish we had a piano,” Mrs. Gommet said once, 
with a note of regret in her voice. She looked up at 
Heckraft. “I expect you prefer to be accompanied, 
don’t you?” 

“Yes, of course. A violin needs the piano, really.” 

“There would be no one to accompany him if we 
had a piano,” Gommet interposed easily. “You 
couldn’t play the things Tony plays. . . . Alieta 
might.” 

Mrs. Gommet frowned in the dim light. 

“Do you always play by ear?” she asked, trying to 
keep the anger out of her tones. 

“Generally,” Heckraft answered. “It’s a bad prac- 
tice, but it’s easier.” 

“It’s nicer, I think,” she said. “Besides, it’s handier 
for playing in the dark.” She turned and faced him 
abruptly with a desire after effect rather than sin- 
cerity. “Your music speaks,” she said. “It makes 
me feel that I want to be — good.” 

He may have detected the absence of sincerity, or 
he may not. Suddenly, almost without his volition, it 


232 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


seemed, he began to tell her of the engineer of the 
Ariadne and the crumpled rose-leaf which was his 
crippled child. Mrs. Gommet was nothing if not emo- 
tional. When he came to a pause the tears were in 
her eyes. 

“It’s a great gift,” she said, — “to make one see 
beauty in unloveliness.” 

“Isn’t it rather,” he corrected gently, “that it gives 
one the greater perception to see the beauty which 
unloveliness merely conceals?” 

Mrs. Gommet caught at the idea of a clearer spirit- 
ual vision borrowed from the soul of emotion at its 
highest, and for a while her flimsy frivolity fell from 
her. 

“I suppose that’s it,” she agreed quite simply. . . . 
“But it’s odd to hear a man say that.” 

Heckraft looked amused. 

“A little priggish, perhaps,” he allowed, in a lighter 
tone, as he placed his instrument carefully in its case. 

Mrs. Gommet, watching him, offered no verbal con- 
tradiction, though it ran through her mind at the mo- 
ment that priggish was not the term. Stirred by the 
music, and oppressed physically as well as mentally 
by the heat of the little room, by its confined space, 
its exasperating ordinariness, she slipped out of the 
window and sauntered down the road, hoping, indeed 
confidently expecting, that Heckraft would follow her. 
Heckraft, however, failing her as he did sufficiently 
often to disabuse her mind of many erroneous ideas 
she had formed concerning him, lighted his pipe and 
sat down opposite Gommet. 

“This Indian disaffection is spreading rapidly,” 
he observed. “In Durban and Maritzburg the strike 
seems to have become general.” 

Gommet nodded assent. 

“They’ve started firing the canes along the coast,” 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 233 


he said, with a certain grim hardness in his voice. 

“And we are sandwiched between the disaffected 
areas,” Heckraft remarked after a slight pause. 

Gommet sat up suddenly, and taking a letter from 
his pocket tossed it across to the speaker. 

“Why the devil haven’t we a light?” he grumbled, 
and rising, set about lighting the lamp on the table. 
When he had replaced the globe on the lamp he 
swung round. 

“That, though it’s addressed to me, should by right 
have been sent to you as manager,” he observed, in- 
dicating the letter in Heckraft’s hand with the stem 
of his pipe. “It contains orders from headquarters 
as to how we are to act in the event of our boys 
striking. Perhaps you’ll inform me why young John- 
son sends his orders to you through me?” 

“How should I know?” Heckraft responded. 

He read the letter and returned it. 

“Confound it!” he muttered. 

“Ties our hands, eh?” Gommet observed, regarding 
the distinctly annoyed face of his companion as he 
sat frowning and staring reflectively at the light. 
“We’re to keep him informed, and to take no steps 
without his authority. One would imagine we were 
blooming serangs. . . . What are you going to do?” 

Heckraft looked up gloomily. 

“Take my orders from the source whence I draw 
my salary, I suppose,” he answered. . . . “There’s 
nothing else for it.” 

Gommet fidgeted with the letter for a space ; finally 
he made a spill with it and holding it over the chim- 
ney of the lamp till it caught the flame, leisurely pro- 
ceeded to relight his pipe which had gone out. 

“You must do as you think fit,” he rejoined. “Only 
if you act on my advice, you’ll emulate a certain 
famous sailor who turned his wall-eye on what he 


234 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


didn’t want to see. I’m going to be jolly well blind 
to the disaffection until my boys refuse point blank 
to work. . . . D’ye see what Johnson means by his 
'no parleying’ with strikers? He’ll either close down 
the place, or try to run it with natives.” 

Heckraft laughed. 

"And he has yet to learn that he has got a red-hot 
socialist to deal with in you. ... You are in sym- 
pathy with the Indians.” 

"I am,” Gommet admitted. . . . "But they’re ask- 
ing too much. The abolition of the poll-tax is only 
just; but to amend the Immigration Act, and repeal 
legislation which offends against their religious and 
marital status, is a tall order. And the full rights of 
citizenship is out of the question at present in a 
country like this. . . . But we have these fellows 
over for our own convenience, and when by their 
labour they increase our wealth, I contend that in 
restricting their movements, and treating them as out- 
side the common rights of citizenship, we aren’t treat- 
ing them fairly. . . . And they make good citizens, 
too,” he added. "They are an intelligent, decent 
people, — in their way.” 

"I’m glad you conceded the afterthought,” Heck- 
raft said. 

"Well, of course, their way isn’t ours. But what 
right have we to tax them for living in a country in 
which many of them have been born? . . . British 
subjects too. . . . And they’re picturesque. Natal 
would lose half its charm swept of the brilliant 
colouring of their clothes. The Indian women are a 
distinct attraction to the country.” 

“To the tripper, perhaps,” Heckraft allowed. 

"Man, do you suppose it is only the tripper who 
possesses the eye to appreciate colour?” Gommet de- 
manded with a seriousness which made his hearer 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 235 

laugh. “Don’t we all admire the flamboyant tree? 
Well, the Indian women suggest to me the same flam- 
boyancy in human shape. ... Not that that’s any 
argument in favour of their existence,” he added with 
a wry smile. “And it’s beside the question.” 

He glanced at Heckraft sharply. 

“I know you don’t agree with me,” he said. 
“You’ve been wet-nursed by tradition. You stand 
by the masters, — by the old order of things. I could 
wish you were not so beastly conservative.” 

“Oh! there’s hope for me,” Heckraft answered, 
smiling. “I keep an open mind on such matters ; and 
I admit I’m learning. . . . Anyway, I’m not siding 
with capital against labour. But you can’t separate 
the one from the other, you know. . . . They’ve got 
to hang together. It’s to be regretted when they fail 
to recognise their mutual dependence.” 

“I seem to have heard that kind of thing before,” 
returned Gommet. “It sounds to me rather like beg- 
ging the question. . . . And it doesn’t fit this par- 
ticular crisis. The disaffection among the Indians is 
a dignified revolt against injustice. It commands re- 
spect, in a way. And there’s a point which most 
people in their objection to the settlement of the In- 
dians in this country overlook, — the mutual antagon- 
ism between them and the natives. In a country 
where the overwhelming majority of the black man 
is a source of increasing danger as we educate him 
to realise his power, this antagonistic element which, 
whatever its private sentiment towards us, will al- 
ways side with the white man against the African, is 
a distinct asset.” 

“Yes,” said Heckraft doubtfully. “But there are 
those who question that, and consider the Indian an 
added menace.” 

“Well,” grunted Gommet, “we are none of us in- 


236 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


fallible; but I will back my knowledge of the Indian, 
against your authority. You’re a babe in regard to 
this country, Tony, and you sup up knowledge from 
the newspapers. As though you hadn’t learnt by 
now that our bold, free press hasn’t the courage of 
its opinions. . . . The immorality of party politics is 
responsible for that.” 

Mrs. Gommet came in, and put a period to the dis- 
cussion. She was panting a little as though she had 
hurried; her face was flushed, and a glitter of ex- 
citement showed in her eyes. 

“Those Indians !” she breathed. 

She advanced to the table, and stood, resting 
against it, staring at the two men. Gommet looked 
at her with quick inquiry. 

“What’s up?” he questioned. 

“I know they’re planning something.” She held 
up her hand. “You can hear them from here . . . 
singing and carrying on. I went up to the hotel, and 
I saw them — swarms of them — chanting and swinging 
lights and making signs.” 

“Tcht! . . . The Mohurrum !” Gommet exclaimed, 
a mingling of irritability and relief in his tones. “You 
ought to be familiar enough with their religious rites 
by now. But you were always scared at Indians.” 

“But it’s early for the Mohurrum, isn’t it?” she 
said. 

“No. It’s in January all right. . . . Seems to me 
they’re always at it, kicking up some holy shindy. 
. . . Comforts ’em, I suppose.” 

Mrs. Gommet was manifestly unconvinced. 

“We’ll be murdered in our beds before you’ll be- 
lieve they are up to mischief,” she cried with grow- 
ing uneasiness. “I don’t trust them. ... I don’t 
like their customs. They’re uncanny. I watched 
them. The women carried braziers out of their 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 237 


houses and swung them, and the men, naked prac- 
tically, swayed to and fro and chanted, and touched 
fire. It was quite dark but for the flaring braziers 
in their midst. The dark figures against the fire 
looked murderous.” 

Gommet laughed. 

"One would never think you had been born in this 
country,” he said. "You are as scared as a hare at 
anything you don’t understand. The Indians are 
safe enough. If it was a Kaffir beer drink you’d 
have reason to be scared.” 

"If they’re burning the sugar crops, why shouldn’t 
they burn this plantation?” she said. 

"They might, of course.” 

Gommet left his seat and slipped an arm round 
her shoulders reassuringly. The small, frightened 
face appealed to his sense of protection; it was so 
pathetically wretched and helpless. 

"Don’t you worry,” he said. "They’re not out for 
anything worse than destruction of property. . . . 
And they wouldn’t commit such serious damage as 
they have done if they were tactfully handled. It’s 
the baases who are mostly responsible for the out- 
rages.” 

Her lip trembled. 

"We are such a handful of Europeans. . . . They 
could murder us easily, and no one would even 
know.” 

Heckraft joined in the discussion. 

"Come ! Mrs. Gommet,” he said. "Don’t lose sight 
of your good sense. They aren’t going to ruin their 
cause for the sake of a petty revenge. It wouldn’t 
profit them to do for the lot of us. Besides, there 
isn’t any personal animus in the case.” 

"You’re like Joe,” Mrs. Gommet returned. "You 
trust the Indians. But coloured people aren’t to be 


238 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


relied upon. . . . Why, only this morning Tapetu 
called me his mother.” 

Gommet broke into a laugh. 

“That’s a bad sign,” he admitted. “Now you speak 
of it, my greaser to-day addressed me as ‘his father 
and his mother.’ The compliment of the dual rela- 
tionship usually signifies that you are going to be 
badly done.” 

“What did I say?” Mrs. Gommet cried excitedly. 
“The last time that happened you lost your scarf 
pin. ... If the hands strike, what will you do?” 

“Enjoy a well earned holiday, I hope,” Gommet 
answered easily. “But don’t you worry, little woman ; 
that good time isn’t coming.” 

“Mambersad has gone,” she reminded him, — “and 
Rudgubadi.” 

Gommet removed his arm from her shoulder and 
walked away. 

“That was a different matter,” he answered. “They 
weren’t plantation hands.” 

“They were indentured Indians,” she returned 
quickly. “They hadn’t any right to leave.” 

“No, they were not indentured,” he corrected, seat- 
ing himself. “As for rights, when a servant makes 
up his mind he wants to go, one is usually jolly well 
glad to be rid of him. In this instance, they didn’t 
ask permission, they simply went.” 

“They’ve followed Gandhi,” Mrs. Gommet asserted. 

“Probably.” 

Gommet reached for his pipe and started to clean 
it. Heckraft, who was leaning out of the open win- 
dow, drew in his head and looked round. 

“Come and listen, Mrs. Gommet,” he said. “It 
really sounds awfully fine, this singing.” 

Mrs. Gommet leaned on the sill beside him; her 
shoulder touched his arm. It may have been that 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 239 


the contact gave her greater confidence, or perhaps 
the sound of the chanting voices, floating towards 
them on the still night air, was less alarming than 
the near sight of the mysterious swaying forms had 
been: she smiled as she leaned at the open window, 
listening to the combination of many voices singing 
in the distance the unfamiliar music of an alien race. 

“It would sound well on the violin,” Heckraft said. 

She looked up at him swiftly and nodded, but she 
did not speak. 


XXVII 


T HE trouble among the Indians on the planta- 
tion, although Gommet, following his princi- 
ple of bringing his wall-eye to bear upon the 
situation, refused to admit it, was working to a head. 
It did not break out all at once: it fermented, and 
died down, and burst forth again sporadically like 
some festering evil which, while not incurable, is 
difficult to subdue. Gommet daily ignored these 
signs, and Heckraft took his cue from the engineer. 

The Indians had worked under Gommet for years. 
They understood and respected him. Had Gommet 
been owner his boys would not at the eleventh hour 
have joined the strikers; as it was, they did so re- 
luctantly, moved by a spirit of self-sacrifice for the 
good of their race in Africa, whom the Government, 
to which they looked for protection, as subjects of 
the Empire, was treating unfairly. Their sense of 
justice, of security, was rudely disturbed. 

The strike on the plantation started in Gommet’s 
household. Tapetu, the cook-boy , and his wife, 
Ntopi, who filled the vacancies made by the flight of 
Rudgubadi and Mambersad, showed the first signs of 
open rebellion. Ntopi absented herself one morning 
on the plea of sickness, and Tapetu, having explained 
his wife’s indisposition, set about the performance 
of her duties and his own with the sullen manner of 
a man preoccupied in mind, and indifferent as to the 
results of his efforts. As a consequence the break- 
240 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 241 


fast was not a success. Later in the morning while 
he was engaged in clearing the table, M'rs. Gommet 
unwisely found fault with his cooking. 

“The porridge was burnt, Tapetu,” she complained. 
“The baas couldn’t eat it.” 

Tapetu paused in his occupation and looked at her 
with a baleful fire in his keen dark eyes. 

“This cook-boy,” he said in tones of dignified re- 
sentment, “will no cook this porridge. To-morrow 
this missis can cook this porridge. . . . Every day 
this missis can cook this porridge. . . . Me, I no 
cook any more.” 

Mrs Gommet lost her temper and scolded him. 

“Don’t you give me cheek, Tapetu,” she cried. “I 
will tell the baas, and he will speak to you.” 

She held a bunch of keys in her hand, and in her 
agitation, which was due to fear of the man as well 
as anger, she swung the keys by their string and set 
them jingling noisily. 

“The eggs were hard,” she said, “and the porridge 
was spoilt. It is disgraceful.” 

“This cook-boy,” he repeated, and his manner lost 
in dignity as he became more excited and talked with 
greater rapidity, “will no cook. This missis can 
cook . . . every day this missis can cook. This cook- 
boy no cook. . . . This cook-boy is a good boy . . . 
he will no cook any more. . . .” 

“Oh ! be quiet/’ almost screamed Mrs. Gommet, and 
in her anger she swung her bunch of keys swiftly and 
caught him with them on the shoulder. The assault 
was not premeditated, and immediately that she had 
struck him she regretted the act. The result was 
alarming. Tapetu dropped where he stood as if he 
had been shot, and squatting on his heels, rocked 
himself violently, and howled like some wild beast 
sorely injured. The noise he made was deafening. 


242 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


Mrs. Gommet stared at him in amazed inadequacy. 
But that she feared he would follow and kill her, she 
would have fled from the room. She kept her head, 
despite the fact that she felt every ounce of courage 
oozing out of her. 

“Be quiet!” she cried fiercely. . . . “Be quiet! 
How dare you make that noise ?” 

The howls of Tapetu gained in volume. He fairly 
bellowed. Mrs. Gommet, frightened, but firm, with 
the desperate courage of despair, took a step nearer 
to him. 

“Be quiet!” she exclaimed authoritatively. “If you 
don’t stop that noise at once, I’ll hit you again.” 

With the agility of a panther, Tapetu sprang to his 
feet and faced her, his eyes blazing with passion. 

“If this missis does that,” he cried dramatically, 
“I go kitchen ... I take knife. . . .” He made 
rapid pantomime with a long brown finger of draw- 
ing a knife across his throat, and rolling up his eyes 
till only the whites were visible, he let forth a blood- 
curdling sound between his teeth. “Cr-r-r-r-rk ! . . . 
I go God plenty quick.” 

Mrs. Gommet was disconcerted, her knees shook 
under her, but still she kept her head. It would 
never do to let this man suspect her terror of him, — 
and it was terror, — blind, unreasoning fear. 

“All right,” she said, — “go kitchen. . . . Plenty 
knives in kitchen. . . . Don’t wait. ... Go now.” 

Without a sound he turned and left the room, and 
Mrs. Gommet’s spirit sunk almost as speedily as it 
had risen at sight of his departure. Suppose he 
should take her at her word? . . . What should she 
do, alone in the house with — that f . . . And what a 
horrible mess it would make in the kitchen. . . . 

She listened for sounds, but no sounds followed; 
the silence seemed almost as ear-splitting as Tapetu’s 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 243 


howls had been. It got upon her nerves. Was the 
man there, or had he left the house? And, if he was 
there, why was it all so silent? ... so still? . . . 
like a house of the dead. . . . 

Her limbs shook under her. She was badly fright- 
ened. Her nerves were giving way. She wanted to 
scream, and dared not, for fear of breaking the hor- 
rible silence. Slowly, walking on tiptoe, she ad- 
vanced to the window and tottered out on to the 
stoep. To her joyful surprise she saw Heckraft 
walking in the centre of the road, going towards the 
lumber sheds. The colour stole back to her white 
cheeks, and some of the horror in her eyes died 
down. She waved to attract his attention. Then the 
silence snapped abruptly, and she called to him. 

“Tony!” she cried desperately. “Tony!” 

He saw by her manner that something was wrong, 
and quickening his steps, ran up to the stoep. She 
swayed towards him. He put out his arm and caught 
her under the impression she was going to fall. Mrs. 
Gommet clung to him, and saved herself from faint- 
ing by bursting into tears. The relief of tears was 
tremendous, but the flood had a disconcerting effect 
upon Heckraft. 

“Steady on!” he said soothingly. “Steady on!” 

Mrs. Gommet suddenly began to laugh; between 
laughter and tears she was verging on the hysterical ; 
but the feel of the strong arm supporting her, and 
the sight of the strong, perturbed face regarding her 
with kindly concern, helped her to keep her mental 
balance to some extent, and having indulged her tears 
for a few minutes, she dried her eyes and withdrew 
from the comforting shelter of his arm. 

“If you hadn’t come just when you did,” she said, 
“I should have died of fright.” 


244 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


“Oh ! not as bad as that,” he replied. . . . “What’s 
wrong, anyway?” 

“That dreadful cook-boy!” she cried. . . . “Oh! 
Tony, I believe he has made a horrible mess in the 
kitchen.” 

Heckraft looked at her curiously. Probably he 
considered that she was still too unstrung to be col- 
lected. Her explanation certainly was dispropor- 
tionate to her alarm. 

“Look here!” he said. “You stay where you are, 
and I’ll go and see. I’ll kick him out — shall I?” 

She laughed again, weakly. 

“If he’s decapitated himself, you won’t be able to,” 
she replied. 

Heckraft left her and went inside to investigate. 
The half-cleared breakfast-table in the sitting-room, 
and a general disorder of things in the kitchen was 
all that met his gaze. Tapetu had departed, leaving 
as evidence of his presence there that morning a 
crimson stain on the otherwise spotless floor, where, 
before leaving, as a sign of contempt, he had ejected 
a thin stream of red juice from the beetel nut he had 
been chewing. He had spat on the floor in his wrath, 
and shaken the dust of the place off his feet. Heck- 
raft removed the insolent token of the cook-boy’s con- 
tempt for the missis who had outraged his sense of 
dignity before he returned to Mrs. Gommet to assure 
her of Tapetu’s departure. 

“He’s cleared,” he said. “You won’t be troubled 
with him again. Shall I send you a younger boy ?” 

She shivered at the suggestion. 

“I won’t have another Indian in the house,” she 
declared. “They are treacherous and vindictive. I’d 
rather do my own work for ever than be waited on 
by Indian servants. The Kaffirs are bad enough, but 
they are not so horribly intelligent.” 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 245 


She recounted for his benefit the scene with 
Tapetu. For the life of him he could not help laugh- 
ing at the dramatic recital, which lost nothing in 
effect by Mrs. Gommet’s telling. 

“And then Joe says our boys aren’t in league with 
the strikers !” she said. She looked up at him swiftly. 
“You know they are — although you side with Joe.” 

He made no immediate answer. He could not con- 
tradict her; she was right; the signs of discontent 
were unmistakable. He did not share Gommet’s be- 
lief that they would be able to quell the emeute before 
it swelled to open rebellion. 

“Perhaps you are wise just now,” he said, “not to 
have a fresh Indian in the house. They are a little 
out of hand. We’ll help with the work after hours. 
I’m not exactly a skilled butler, but I can wash dishes 
all right.” 

She laughed. 

“I’d love to see you doing it,” she said. 

Heckraft started his duties there and then by help- 
ing to clear the breakfast-table, then he left Mrs. 
Gommet to the washing-up and went on to the 
works. 

He was a little uneasy in his mind about Mrs. 
Gommet. He possessed the inherent masculine preju- 
dice against the presence of women where a possi- 
bility of disturbance threatened; the thought of her 
alone in the house, although Gommet was not far 
away, was oddly disturbing. Later, he suggested to 
Gommet the advisability of sending her to the hotel. 
But Gommet apprehended no danger from the In- 
dians, and Mrs. Gommet preferred to remain in her 
home. She rather enjoyed housekeeping under the 
novel conditions, and in the evenings, when Tony and 
her husband removed the supper things from the sit- 
ting-room and bore them into the kitchen, where 


246 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


they washed them and stacked them on the dresser 
in business-like fashion, she treated the whole thing 
as an amazing joke. While the coffee, which Heck- 
raft insisted upon making every night, was the best, 
she averred, that she had ever tasted. 

Mrs. Gommet was in her rightful element. She 
enjoyed being watched over with the surreptitious 
protectiveness which both her husband and the man- 
ager practised, deluding themselves into believing 
that they successfully concealed their anxiety from 
her. They fussed unobtrusively over her of an evening, 
and relieved her of many small duties. It troubled 
Gommet that his wife should have to work. He 
knew how uncongenial to her household drudgery 
was. But under existing circumstances, the drudgery 
was lightened for her by her sense of the romantic. 
She was living in a world of her own making 
for the time, and playing to the gallery amused her. 
Her fear of the Indians was less assertive when she 
was not brought into contact with them ; and she had 
a confident feeling that if real danger were immi- 
nent Heckraft, as well as her husband, would 
protect her with his last breath. That she was 
selfishly increasing their responsibilities by remaining 
did not occur to her. 

One evening, shortly after Tapetu’s defection, Gom- 
met brought his wife a note from Alieta when he 
came in from work. She was in the kitchen prepar- 
ing their tea-supper, so he laid the note on the table 
and went into the bedroom to wash. It was still 
lying where he had left it when he re-entered the 
sitting-room. He heard his wife chatting with Heck- 
raft, who had come in after him, and was now fol- 
lowing his usual custom of helping to carry in the 
supper things. Mrs. Gommet appeared to be in high 
spirits, and she was affecting Heckraft with her mer- 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 247 


riment. Their laughter drew Gommet to the kitchen. 
He carried the note with him. 

“For you,” he said, giving it to his wife as he 
entered. 

She turned, and fork in one hand and frying-pan in 
the other, surveyed him with a faint contraction of 
the brows. 

“Van der Vyver brought it in this afternoon. It’s 
from Alieta,” he explained. 

Heckraft relieved her of the frying-pan. 

“I’ll finish this while you attend to your corre- 
spondence,” he said. 

Mrs. Gommet hesitated before opening her letter. 

“They’re cooked,” she remarked, glancing at him 
over her shoulder. “I was just about to take them 
up.” 

She tore the envelope open slowly, while Heckraft 
turned the chops out on a dish, giving a divided at- 
tention to what he was doing and to the note in her 
hand. 

Mrs. Gommet rather resented the fact that Alieta, 
for whom she no longer entertained a kindly feeling, 
should have started a correspondence. It looked 
rather as though there was something in what Joe 
had said relative to her partiality for Tony; she was 
apparently desirous of continuing the friendship, 
which, Mrs. Gommet decided, pointed to an attraction 
greater than Alieta’s regard for herself. 

“It’s an invitation,” Gommet observed, with the 
manner of a man who believes he is imparting agree- 
able information. 

“Yes.” Mrs. Gommet continued to frown slightly 
as she read the brief, friendly epistle. “She asks me 
to go out to the farm for a while.” 

“Well,” Gommet said cheerfully, “that’s all right, 
eh?” 


24 8 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


Mrs. Gommet glanced coquettishly at Heckraft. 

“How could I go and leave you two boys to muddle 
along alone ?” she demanded. 

“Oh ! Tony and I could manage/’ Gommet returned 
with a laugh. 

Heckraft said nothing. He was poking the chops 
on the dish about with a fork in an attempt to ar- 
range them as he had an idea they ought to be ar 
ranged. They wouldn’t sort themselves somehow; 
they crowded together and lay in an untidy heap. 

“Tony, say you couldn’t spare me,” she pleaded. 

Heckraft did not look up from his occupation. 

“I intend to be self-sacrificing, and suggest the 
advisability of your going,” he answered, still intent 
on his job. 

She watched him with jealous observance. 

“And, if I follow your advice, will you come out 
and see me — often?” 

“Joe will,” he replied. 

“But you ? . . . I asked you.” 

“I never go there,” he answered quietly. “The old 
people don’t like me, and they make it sufficiently 
obvious to warn me off.” 

“It’s .excusable. . . . You see, they have a very 
charming daughter, and you are only a poor man, 
Tony.” 

“I can’t flatter myself that that is their reason,” 
he returned, “since Miss Van der Vyver is already 
engaged.” 

“So you have heard that ?” Mrs. Gommet exclaimed 
in surprise. 

“I have it on the very best authority,” he said, 
and abruptly ended the conversation by lifting the 
dish of chops and transporting them to the next room. 

Mrs. Gommet looked after him reflectively. She 
had forgotten the invitatiori to Odsani ; she had for- 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 249 


gotten the presence of her husband, till he reminded 
her of both by commenting on the kindness of the 
Van der Vyvers in asking her over there until the 
present disturbance subsided. 

“You’ll go, of course?” he said. 

Her eyes wandered back to his face. 

“I have no intention whatever of leaving home,” 
she said. 


XXVIII 


G OMMET, bending over his engine, looked up 
sharply as a figure darkened the doorway, and 
oil-feeder in hand, greeted the appearance of 
Heckraft with an astonishing flow of bad language. 
Heckraft, unmoved by the sulphuric epithets, entered 
and sat down on a sack of bark. 

“I thought you might be feeling that way,” he 
said. “I came down to see.” 

He glanced about him. At the far end of the long 
building, in the room partitioned off for the engine 
which ground the maize into meal, two Indians, one 
a youngster, were pursuing their usual task with an 
air of impassive detachment. There was no sign 
of anyone else about. But the machinery for cut- 
ting up the bark was working, from which it was to 
be deduced that other Indians were at work on the 
upper floor. 

“Things a bit slack?” he remarked. 

Gommet put down the oil-feeder and wiped his 
perspiring brow. 

“Slack!” he grunted. “I’d like to hamstring every 
mother’s son of them. There’s one boy to feed the 
cutter, and not a blankety Coolie to attend to the 
engines. We shan’t get a third of a morning’s work 
done.” 

“One boy at the cutter ought to be enough, con- 
sidering there is no one to bark the trees. You can’t 
cut up bark if the supply fails,” Heckraft answered 
with easy philosophy. 


250 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 251 


Gommet scrutinised the speaker closely. 

“Your boys struck?” he asked. 

“Mafuza still sticks to his job, with about a dozen 
others.” 

Gommet’s expression was gloomy. 

“That’s bad,” he said. “Mafuza leads the gang 
like a flock of sheep. His working is only a blind.” 

“So I thought. I called in on my way to the sta- 
tion to let you know I was going to send the informa- 
tion through.” 

“Yes. I suppose it’ll have to come to that.” 

The engineer’s tone was as lugubrious as his face. 
He hated to have to acknowledge defeat. 

“Silly jackasses!” he muttered. “What good is it 
going to do them? The loss to Johnson will be such 
a flea-bite that he’ll enjoy giving them a lesson by 
sacking the lot. This farm is more by way of an 
experiment with him. It only just pays anyhow. . . . 
I wish it was our own strike, Tony, on our own 
land.” 

“I don’t,” Heckraft answered. “Strikes aren’t a 
hobby of mine. They’re bad enough in the old coun- 
try; they’re a menace to public safety out here. And 
it’s absurd for these fellows to imagine they can fight 
the government. . . . They’ve everything to lose.” 

Gommet acquiesced. 

“Look here, Tony,” he said abruptly, “you hold 
your hand a bit. I’m going to have a talk with 
Mafuza. . . . Let me give the poor devils a last 
chance. I can’t see my boys deliberately cutting 
their own throats without trying to prevent it. . . . 
I’ve got more influence than you; I’ve known them 
longer. Once you let the puppy meddle in this, the 
game’s up.” 

Heckraft, though he had no doubts as to the issue, 
was not difficult to persuade. If Gommet believed 


252 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


there was the smallest chance of making his boys 
hear reason, he was more than willing that he should 
have the opportunity he asked for; but it was a for- 
lorn hope, in his opinion, and foredoomed to failure. 
The strongest European influence when it came in 
contact with the fanatical Indian mind was very 
limited. 

In the end, Gommet had to admit himself beaten; 
and so eventually the news was telegraphed to Dur- 
ban that the Indians on Johnson’s plantation had 
struck. The strike was general. Not an Indian was 
at work when the message went through. 

Johnson, senior, sent for his son when he received 
the news. He pushed the telegram across to the 
younger man without comment, and continued dic- 
tating to a stenographer, as he had been doing when 
young Johnson entered. A gleam, expressive both of 
satisfaction and annoyance, shone in Harold John- 
son’s eyes while he read the message. Then he laid 
the form down on the desk before him. 

“As usual,” he said, “your manager allows the 
worst to happen before he condescends to inform 
us.” 

He waited until his father paused in his dictation, 
then he added: 

“Had we known earlier, this might have been 
averted.” 

The stenographer left the room. Mr. Johnson sat 
back in his seat, and gave his attention to the matter 
in hand. 

“I doubt it,” he said. “But we’ll make a change 
if you like. Rath wants to offer Heckraft the man- 
agement of the Ringhals estate. It means a bigger 
screw as well as other advantages, and I don’t feel 
inclined to stand in his light.” 

Harold Johnson scowled. 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 253 


“We couldn’t recommend him to Sir George as a 
thoroughly efficient man,” he objected. 

“Sir George pretty well knows his qualifications,” 
was the reply. “And there’s nothing against him. 
Besides, he’ll have an assistant manager. It will suit 
better all round. I mean to dock the salary in future. 
The pay is in excess of the work, and the profit the 
farm yields.” 

Young Johnson, who shared his father’s commer- 
cial shrewdness, without which shrewdness millions 
are seldom acquired, concurred with this. If wages 
are not paid in proportion to profitable returns they 
must in all cases fall with a decrease in profits. That 
was business, as he understood it. 

The older man returned to the affair of the strike. 

“I haven’t time for this,” he said, tapping the tele- 
gram on his desk. “I’m going to hand it over to you. 
You’ll act as you think fit, — and take full responsibil- 
ity. . . . The only bit of advice I give you is to re- 
member that in public affairs men don’t allow their 
private animosities to intrude.” 

He leaned forward as the telephone bell rang at 
his elbow and took up the receiver. Johnson hesi- 
tated a moment before leaving. 

“You give me a free hand?” he asked. 

“Absolutely.” 

The young man turned quickly and left the office, 
the anticipation of stirring events to follow lighting 
his eyes with a glint of pleasurable excitement. He 
would show the beggars how little he regarded strik- 
ers, and he would instruct Gommet, and the prig of 
a manager, in the way to treat niggers who refused 
to work. If Heckraft presumed to interfere, he 
would give him a dressing down in front of his boys. 
Almost he hoped that Heckraft would interfere so 
that he might publicly humiliate him. 


254 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


Outside the office he ran into Muriel Rath, and in- 
flated by a sense of the importance of the task de- 
volving on him, he could not refrain from dilating 
upon the gravity of the situation he was called upon 
to settle to this appreciative listener. 

“I’m just off to Drummond,” he said. “Our Coolies 
have struck. The manager appears to have lost his 
head, and having got things into a mess, wires to us 
for help. The governor wants me to go up and set- 
tle matters.” 

She regarded him with a mingling of admiration 
and concern. It was plain that she considered him 
brave, and his mission hazardous in the extreme. 

“Oh!” she exclaimed, and paled with anxiety for 
his safety. “You won’t go alone?” she urged. . . . 
“Father says the Indians are in a highly excited state. 
There’s been loss of life already, you know.” 

He laughed at her fears. 

“I’ll excite them,” he said. “Pretty state of af- 
fairs when niggers start striking, and demanding their 
rights.” 

“They’re not niggers,” she said. 

“It’s all the same,” he argued. “The next thing 
will be an organised strike among the natives. That 
sort of thing can’t be tolerated. We’ve got to put 
it down.” 

“You won’t be rash, Harold,” she pleaded. 

“Come!” he said, smiling down on her. “You 
wouldn’t worry overmuch if anything happened to me, 
would you? It would mean merely a partner less 
at dances, — a thinning of the crowd by one. I don’t 
believe you would shed a single tear.” 

She looked so very like shedding tears there and 
then that he ceased his teasing, and added comfort- 
ingly: 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 255 


“There isn’t any need for anxiety. I’ll be back 
before you realise that I’ve gone. I know how to 
handle these fellows all right. . . . The governor is 
quite satisfied to leave the control of everything with 
me. 

He was so youthful in his bumptiousness that any- 
one but Muriel Rath would have felt amused; she, 
however, took him seriously, and was properly 
impressed with his qualities of courage, and his busi- 
ness acumen. Her eyes were big with respectful ad- 
miration. 

“I know he thinks an awful lot of you,” she said. 

“I’m not so positive as to that,” he answered mod- 
estly. “But he’s quite comfortable in his mind about 
leaving this business in my hands. He knows I enjoy 
a bit of a scrap.” 

“When do you go?” she asked. 

“Immediately. I’m just off home to get the car 
and a few necessaries.” 

She was silent a while, twirling the handle of her 
parasol, and looking away from him along the sunny, 
crowded pavement. 

“I wish you weren’t going,” she said presently. “I 
feel ” 

She broke off abruptly, and her eyes came back 
with shy wistfulness to his face, a foreshadowing of 
trouble in their depths. 

“You might get hurt,” she murmured. 

It was not in Harold Johnson to resist an opening 
of this nature. He took advantage of the stream 
of passers-by to press closer to her side. 

“Would you care?” he asked softly. 

“Yes.” 

Muriel Rath became gauche when her emotions 
were excited; she could never rise to such moments 
artistically. The blunt monosyllable damped his gal- 


256 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


lantry. He experienced a feeling of boredom, and 
immediately shifted his ground. 

“If our manager wasn’t an ass it wouldn’t be neces- 
sary for me to go,” he observed acrimoniously, and 
then recollecting that the manager was a friend of her 
father he sheered away from the topic altogether, 
and shortly after parted from her, dissatisfied on the 
whole with the interview, and classing her in his 
thoughts as a simpleton whom he could not alto- 
gether dislike because of her genuine admiration for 
himself. That, so far as he could determine, was 
the only sign of intelligence she displayed. 

It was not until he was half way to Drummond that 
he remembered Mrs. Gommet. In the hurry and ex- 
citement of the morning he had not taken into con- 
sideration the fact of Mrs. Gommet’s return to her 
husband’s home. It would be awkward, deuced awk- 
ward, he decided, if they chanced to meet. This 
thought worried him considerably. Why had he 
been such a fool as to assist in the ridiculous reunion 
of two people so extremely unsuited? He had hoped 
to further his own ends in thus ridding himself finally 
of a mistress who had ceased to please him, and from 
whom he had been vainly trying to break away ever 
since Alieta had come into his life. The return to 
her husband had seemed to him to offer an easy solu- 
tion of the difficulty. But he had to admit now that 
he had overreached himself in the selfish irresponsi- 
bility with which he had thought to fling off an encum- 
brance. He had removed a millstone from about his 
neck, and it had assumed the proportion of a verit- 
able mountain in his path. 

The thought of Mrs. Gommet took away considerably 
from the satisfaction he had felt in his present under- 
taking. He did not fear any number of discontented 
Indians, but he was horribly afraid of the little woman 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 257 

whom, at the age of twenty, he had passionately 
adored, and had since carelessly discarded like a toy 
which has served its purpose, for what he vainglori- 
ously styled the grand passion of his life. But such 
men have only one grand passion, the object of which 
is self. 

He had purposed staying at the hotel at Drummond 
as more convenient. He wanted to be on the spot. 
Now he determined to go on to Inchanga; distance 
was no great consideration when a man has his own 
motor, and there would be less chance of awkward 
encounters if he were a few miles away. Besides, 
it would be handy to Odsani, and he had every in- 
tention of visiting Alieta in defiance of the other wom- 
an’s jealous strictures. It was primarily the hope of 
seeing Alieta, and of recovering the ground which he 
felt he had lost, that had made him so eager to under- 
take this job. He meant to make a long business of 
it. He could stretch it over several days without ex- 
citing his father’s suspicions as to his purpose in lin- 
gering. He understood perfectly that in entrusting 
the matter to him, his father was but following his 
principle of treating his engagement, as he had said 
he should treat it, as though he knew nothing of it, 
as though, in short, there was nothing to know. He 
simply ignored it. 

None of these reflections were particularly sooth- 
ing to Johnson. Everything conduced to make his 
courtship an uphill task. Even the woman he loved, 
who ought to have helped him along the journey, 
held back from him, inaccessible and distant, stand- 
ing at the summit of the steep path set about with its 
many obstacles, watching his difficult advance with- 
out once leaning towards him with helping encourag- 
ing hands. . . . But he would reach her. On that 
point he was very positive. He would hold her to her 


258 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


promise in spite of what she had told him. He be- 
lieved that it was due alone to Heckraft’s treachery 
that she was weakening in her allegiance to him. When 
she was married to him she would have to make up 
to him for that. In any case, if she heard certain 
rumours concerning him later there would be a bal- 
ance on her side to equalise matters. After their 
marriage he would get some of his own back. 

Working along these lines for a while, his mind 
took a pleasanter turn. But only for a time. When 
the hills broke upon his vision as the car climbed 
the steep road, and the scent of the golden crowned 
wattles lining their slopes was wafted to him on the 
hot still air, the vision of Alieta retreated, became 
elusive and inaccessible once more, and the faded 
prettiness of Mrs. Gommet, recalled by the surround- 
ings in which he had first seen her, — from which he 
had taken her, because she hated, as he hated, the 
acrid, overpowering perfume of the trees when they 
were in full bloom, occupied once again the fore- 
ground of the picture, — dominated it, — filled the en- 
tire canvas to the blurring and obliteration of every- 
thing else. And the face of Mrs. Gommet, as it im- 
pressed itself upon his imagination, wore always the 
bitter, resentful look he had seen on it when he had 
tried to make her understand, and accept in a reason- 
able spirit, the fact that he had ceased to care for her. 


XXIX 


J OHNSON stopped at Drummond and spent some 
hours there. He held unsatisfactory interviews 
with Gommet and Heckraft at the hotel. He 
also sent for Mafuza, who, rather to Gommet’s sur- 
prise, attended upon him promptly. 

Mafuza’s deportment was in admirable contrast in 
its dignity and restraint to Johnson’s overbearing, 
high-handed way of showing his authority. But his 
manner was baffling in its non-committal reticence. He 
threw out his dark hands in a wide gesture that re- 
pudiated all responsibility for what the three men, 
listening to his guarded replies to all questions rela- 
tive to the crisis, were fully aware he had been chiefly 
instrumental in bringing about. 

Mafuza was a courteous and intelligent Indian, a 
born leader, and like most of his race, extraordinarily 
secretive. To all Johnson’s blustering threats he 
would only repeat what was familiar to everyone — 
the Indians had a grievance : they looked to the Gov- 
ernment to redress their wrongs ; until that was done 
they refused to work. He had talked to them. . . . 
There was no use in talking. . . . They demanded 
the rights of citizenship, and the removal of the poll- 
tax. The former was an old grievance, the latter 
a later and greater indignity. As subjects of the 
Empire they resented being taxed for living in any 
part of the Empire’s dominions, and from being re- 
stricted in their movements from province to 
province. 


259 


260 valley of a thousand hills 


Johnson swore at him. Did he suppose the Gov- 
ernment was to be dictated to by swine? He had a 
jolly good mind to kick him for his damned inso- 
lence. It was cheek, monstrous cool cheek, to come 
to him with a tale like that. 

“Get out of this/’ he shouted. “Get back to .your 
quarters. I give you till noon to-morrow to make 
up your minds. If every blessed Coolie isn’t back at 
work by twelve o’clock, you can tell them from me 
they had better look out for their skins. Now clear 
out, before I kick you out.” 

“It isn’t any use talking to them like that, Mr. 
Johnson,” Gommet said in a disgusted voice, as Ma- 
fuza backed from the presence, not out of respect for 
his angry employer, but as a precautionary measure. 
“A Kaffir might swallow that sort of thing, but an 
Indian won’t.” 

Johnson swung round on the speaker fiercely. 

“It’s you, and men like you, who teach these scum 
disrespect for the white man,” he said. “When I 
want your advice how to treat Indians, I’ll ask for it.” 

To Johnson’s further annoyance, Heckraft here 
turned upon his heel and left the room. The mana- 
ger felt that unless he was prepared to answer a 
charge for assault he was safer outside, — he could not 
remain in Johnson’s presence and keep his hands off 
the man. But Gommet, being less heady, stuck his 
ground with immense unconcern. 

“Call him back,” said Johnson curtly. “I’ve not 
finished. ... I have work for him.” 

In spite of the discouraging manner in which his 
former advice had been received, Gommet offered a 
further suggestion. 

“I’d leave him alone, if I were you,” he counselled 
drily. 

Johnson flushed, and glared in baulked annoyance 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 261 


at the door which the manager had closed upon his 
retreat. Presumably, he saw the discretion of this ad- 
vice, for he did not persist. He looked back sourly 
at Gommet. 

“It seems as if the strike were not confined to the 
Indians,” he said. 

“It’s spreading, I think,” Gommet allowed. 

Johnson, pondering this darkly for a moment, finally 
let it pass. He recognised that if he wanted the assist- 
ance of these men — and he did want it — he would 
have to climb down. 

“Look here,” he said abruptly, “it’s dry work talk- 
ing. . . . What’ll you drink?” 

“Not for me, thanks,” Gommet answered. 

“You’re breaking out in a fresh place,” the other 
sneered. “Turned teetotal?” 

“Not exactly. But I’m under a promise to the wife 
not. to drink before sundown.” 

This reference to Mrs. Gommet was distasteful 
and disconcerting to the younger man. He moved 
sharply, and again abruptly shifted the talk. 

“What do you think about the chances of the boys 
returning to work to-morrow?” he asked. 

“I don’t think anything about it,” Gommet replied. 
“I’m dead certain they won’t.” 

“I propose getting a gang of boys from Umlaas,” 
Johnson explained, — “or Umkimaas. ... I want 
Heckraft to see to it. We don’t take back strikers.” 

“It’s no use Heckraft undertaking to procure na- 
tives; he can’t speak Kaffir,” Gommet returned. 

Johnson glanced at him quickly. 

“You can?” he said. 

“Not enough for that job,” Gommet replied with 
unmistakable firmness. 

There was no misunderstanding him. His hearer 
frowned heavily. 


262 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


“You’re for working against me,” he said sharply. 

“Not quite that,” was the steady answer. “But I’m 
not working with you in a deal with natives. ... It 
won’t answer, anyway. Get a gang of raw natives 
here, and we’ll have to teach them their work. That’s 
not good enough. ... at least, not for me.” 

Johnson’s temper got out of hand at this. 

“I think we’d be happier apart,” he said. “You’d 
better find a more suitable billet, — for it’s certain 
this place will be run with native labour. ... If you 
don’t like that, we must come to some arrangement 
that will suit both sides. I’m going to Umlaas, — 
myself — now. . . . I’ll have a gang of boys by to- 
morrow ready to take on.” 

Gommet, listening, fully confident that the speaker 
would be as good as his word, was moved to a reluc- 
tant admiration. All that energy and determination 
and push directed into the right channels would be 
admirable, he reflected; misused, as it was by a man 
utterly lacking in control, it was merely annoying. 

“All right,” he said. “I don’t mind if I do make 
a change. It has been in my thoughts of late.” 

“We’ll speak of that later,” Johnson said with a 
scowl. “For the present, I’d have you bear in mind 
that I look to you to back me up. . . . You’d better 
talk to Heckraft about that too. I’m not sure where 
his sympathies lie.” 

“If you mean you’re afraid he’ll side with coloured 
men against his own breed, you can put that idea 
away,” Gommet returned with sharp assurance. 

It was no use getting angry with a man like that, 
he decided later. It was due to the quality of his own 
mind that he could impute such crooked tendencies to 
others. 

Johnson left in his car in a whirl of dust and furi- 
ous energy. He had a hard day’s work before him, 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 263 


work in the carrying out of which, if he had no hin- 
drance to fear — and he was not satisfied that he had 
none — he recognised that at least he could not depend 
on outside help. 

His energy was as remarkable as was his imper- 
viousness to discouragement. 

It was not until the light fell that he rested from 
his labours ; then, satisfied on the whole with his day, 
he returned to his hotel at Inchanga, and having 
changed and dined, set out on foot for Odsani. 

Alieta was less surprised at seeing him than he had 
expected. Knowing of the trouble on the plantation, 
she had been looking to see him in their neighbour- 
hood for days, — looking for, and dreading his ad- 
vent. 

Her reception of him was not encouraging. She 
held him off when he would have taken her in his 
arms. This refusal of his caress infuriated him. 

“Still appearing in that r 61 e? ,, he sneered. “I 
thought I had given you time to get over that. . . . 
But no doubt you’ve been putting in the period dur- 
ing my absence in flirting with Heckraft.” 

“I have not seen Mr. Heckraft since I saw you 
last,” she returned coldly. “Your accusation is un- 
pardonable.” 

Some quality in her bearing brought him to his 
senses ; his bullying manner fell from him ; he became 
a suppliant and at her feet once more. 

“Alieta,” he said pleadingly, “forgive me. I’m be- 
side myself, and scarcely know what I say. . . . Why 
are you so hard, dear love? God knows how I 
hunger for a kind word from you. . . . And after all 
these weeks, not even a kiss ! . . .” 

Alieta turned away from him. She seated herself, 
and rested an elbow on her chair-arm, and supported 
her chin on her hand- 


264 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


“ I can’t, Harold,” she said. . . . “If you knew ! . . . 
Oh! if you could only understand! . . 

“But — good God ! — ” he cried desperately, “what is 
there to know? ... You gave yourself to me. . . . 
Didn’t you love me then?” 

“I thought I did,” she answered slowly. 

“Thought!” he almost shouted, and added scorn- 
fully, forgetful that he too had once thought he truly 
loved a woman whom now he hated. “One doesn’t 
think about these things, — one knows!' 

“Yes,” she said, sadly ; “I have learnt that.” 

“You mean,” he said with savage bitterness, “that 
you know you don’t care for me since you have met 
Heckraft?” 

For a full minute there was silence in the room, 
and then Alieta answered in a voice that was scarcely 
a whisper: 

“I don’t wish to hurt you, but — I mean that.” 

He went to her and caught her shoulder in a 
grip that was vice-like. 

“You’ve told him — that?” he muttered. 

“No.” She looked away from him, and her lip 
trembled. “There is nothing between us,” she said. 
. . . “There can never be anything — while you are 
there.” 

“I see.” 

He released her shoulder, and sat down at the table 
opposite her, and leaned his arms upon it. 

“And you still want me to release you?” he asked 
in a hard voice. 

She did not look at him. 

“I want you to release me,” she answered. 

“And then you’ll go to Heckraft?” 

His tones cut like steel. Alieta sunk her face lower 
on her hand, and struggled for a while for composure. 
When she could trust her voice she answered him. 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 265 


“A woman doesn’t go to a man,” she said. 

“Not when she’s confident he will come to her, I 
suppose.” 

She disregarded the sneer. 

“I am not confident,” she answered simply. “Mr. 
Heckraft believes that I love you.” 

“And so you do,” he declared. 

Then he broke down. He dropped his face on his 
arms on the table, and his shoulders shook with his 
sobs. Alieta, dismayed and astonished beyond words, 
surveyed in silence this distressful exhibition of weak- 
ness in a man whom she had always considered a 
virile, if not a particularly strong, personality. His 
break-down moved.her to a strange compassion. From 
the bottom of her soul she pitied him, — this man who 
at heart was still a boy. It wrung her heart to wit- 
ness his humiliation and his misery, — to feel that she 
was the cause of it, — that in her gift lay the power 
of healing, and that she could not use the gift. 

“Oh, don’t!” she whispered at last. 

She rose and went and stood beside him, laying a 
hand upon his heaving shoulders. 

“Don’t ! . . . What can I say ? . . . What can I do ?” 

He lifted his wrung and boyish face and stared at 
her with tear-blurred eyes. 

“You could say that you didn’t mean it,” he an- 
swered with a break in his voice. . . . “You might — 
Oh! Alieta, kiss me, — in God’s name! ... I think 
I shall go mad.” 

He dropped his face again, and his shoulders heaved 
as before with big sobs that shook his great frame 
as violently as uncontrolled emotion shakes the ten- 
der frame of a distressed child. 

“You don’t care,” he mumbled. . . . “You don’t 
care. ... If you did, you would kiss me.” 

“It’s because I care so much,” she answered, “that 


266 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


I don’t do what you ask. . . . Surely only a woman 
without heart would seek to ease your pain by be- 
stowing a caress that carried no other meaning with 
it? You don’t wish me to be insincere?” 

He rubbed his eyes suddenly and sat back, a frus- 
trated expression on his face. He felt angry at what 
he termed her callousness; he resented her attitude 
of maternal kindliness which pitied while it did not 
give way to him. At the moment he hated her super- 
iority. 

“You are driving me mad,” he said. “You’ll drive 
me to drink, — or the devil. ... You know that I wor- 
ship you, Alieta, — that you’re the one woman in the 
world for me. . . . There’s nothing for me if you 
give me the go-by. . . . It’ll be the end of all.” 

She moved abruptly away from him, impatient with 
him for his weakness, and intolerant of his selfish- 
ness which admitted no room tor anything save pity 
for his own condition. 

“I should be sorry to believe that you had no more 
restraint, or self-reliance, than your words would 
lead one to suppose,” she said. “That doesn’t prom- 
ise very well for the future.” 

“You’re as cold as a fish,” he grumbled. . . . “It’s 
in keeping with my opinion of your sex. You lead a 
man on for your own ends; when you’ve got all you 
want out of him, you shoulder him out of it as if he 
didn’t count. . . . You’ve had the best of me. ... I 
thought that earth was heaven because you lived on it ; 
and it made a better man of me. Now ” 

He broke off abruptly, and sat still in his chair, 
staring glumly at the table. Alieta looked back at 
him, the love which she had for Heckraft rising in 
her like a flood, softening her breast towards this man 
whom she had never really loved, drowning all 
thought of self in a rush of great emotions too big 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 267 


to admit room for any thought that was selfish or 
small. Something fell away from her at that moment, 
and a virtue, begotten of a great love, was born in 
her with all the pangs and suffering which pregnancy 
entails. If this man loved her as she loved Anthony 
Heckraft, what right had she to set him aside, because 
she had learnt too late what he already knew — what 
love was? 


XXX 


}' | AHE dwellers in lands of an older civilisation 
can scarcely appreciate the dangers and diffi- 
culties of a strike in undeveloped countries, 
where many races, and varied racial distinctions, exist 
and have to be observed. When disturbances arise 
in such countries there are bigger things to face than 
merely the distress of disorganisation caused by 
labour crises in a less cosmopolitan community hedged 
about and protected by the laws of an ordered society. 
The big danger in South Africa is always the native, 
and the native problem must remain a knotty ques- 
tion until the African has left his condition of semi- 
savagery some centuries behind him. Until that stage 
of evolution is reached the iron rule cannot with 
safety be relaxed. Indeed the higher intermediary 
stages of civilization to which the native has already 
attained only increase the danger. Education and 
freer intercourse with the white races breed the com- 
petitive instinct in certain minds of a more restless 
and ambitious tendency than the ordinary; from this 
class springs the leader who imbues his less enlight- 
ened brothers with the spirit of discontent which 
makes for revolt. 

The chief drawback to the present system of rule 
in young countries peopled by alien races is the power 
vested in the individual; but that power becomes 
yearly less and less important. It is, however, a men- 
ace to society when it rests with men of Harold John- 
268 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 269 


son’s type, men who have no qualification for ruling 
because they cannot govern themselves. When John- 
son, senior, gave his son a free hand in the matter of 
the strike, Johnson, junior, felt that it was tantamount 
to a permission to take the law into his own hands. It 
was, within limits : so long as no fuss was made as a 
result of his handling of the difficulty, he knew he 
would be all right, — and even if there was a bit of a 
fuss, he argued, his father’s influence, and the influ- 
ence of others, would help him out of the scrape. 

He talked the matter over with old Van der Vyver, 
and Van der Vyver, who held the view of the less ad- 
vanced Boer, that all such disturbances should be set- 
tled promptly with a firm hand and no parleying, 
agreed with him on the whole; though on the sub- 
ject of native labour for wattle growing he was dis- 
tinctly discouraging. 

“You might almost as well cease working the 
plantation,” he said. 

But Harold Johnson was obstinate, and held to his 
idea. 

He left Odsani early that evening. He had still 
some matters to attend to, and he had to be up at 
sunrise. Alieta allowed him to kiss her when he went 
away. They were seated on the stoep together, and 
Johnson on rising to take his departure drew her up 
with him and put his arms about her: as Alieta did 
not repulse him, he bent his head and kissed her. 

“You’ll be true to me, Alieta?” he muttered against 
her lips. 

She drew back slightly. 

“If you still wish it, yes,” she said. 

“You know my answer to that,” he returned, and 
caught her to him fiercely, crushing her in his em- 
brace. 

“I’ll come to-morrow,” he said, releasing her with 


270 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


surprising suddenness, his manner in his excitement 
jerky and fragmentary. . . . “Daren’t stop now. . . . 
I’ll make a fool of myself, if I do. . . . I’ll come to- 
morrow when I’m through with the worst of this 
business, and you’ll hearten and console me, — won’t 
you, dear?” 

When he was gone Alieta remained on the stoep 
alone, leaning with her arms on the rail, looking out 
on the quiet night. Was this what life meant? . . . 
Was her awakening womanhood to find its fulfil- 
ment in a life lived side by side with this man, with 
minds out of harmony, and sympathies widely es- 
tranged? . . . Could she reconcile herself to the in- 
dignity of such a marriage? . . . satisfy her hungry 
craving for love with the man’s unbridled passion for 
possession which refused to be checked even by her 
obvious reluctance? . . . She shivered at the prospect 
of living always with a man whom she now knew she 
neither loved nor respected. And yet she felt that a 
greater treachery would be hers if she broke finally 
with him. A sense of responsibility, more than a 
sense of honour, held her to her promise ; by his mis- 
erable break-down he had taken an unfair advantage 
of her. 

Alieta shivered again as she stood in the warm 
darkness, sadly companioned with her troubled 
thoughts, and with the pain of a great regret op- 
pressing her soul. She knew now what many a 
woman — many a man too — has discovered too late, 
that to accept love lightly inevitably brings its tragic 
consequences. The moment for her had arrived, and 
it found her no longer free. . . . 

The strong scent of the wattles was wafted to her 
on the night breeze, full-blossomed and acrid, the fad- 
ing flowers of a season almost spent. She stepped 
down from the stoep, and walked forward into the 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 271 

moonless night, and the stars, gleaming luminously 
in the cloudless heavens, shone upon a white, set face, 
and dimly lighted a pair of sorrow-darkened, tearless 
eyes. . . . 

Alieta was not alone in her sorrow. Heckraft too 
was enduring his dark hour; and for him there was 
not the consolation of knowing that his love for her 
was returned. She had denied him the delight with 
the pain of that knowledge. He pictured her, satisfied 
and happy, in the company of her lover. He hated 
the man, but because of his love for Alieta he wished 
him no ill. 

Following his restless mood, he too went forth into 
the darkness. Inside the house he had felt suffocated. 
The air was hot, stifling; and Gommet was gloomily 
silent, Mrs. Gommet nervous and irritable and un- 
strung. He understood Gommet’s moodiness, and 
sympathised with it. The socialist engineer, who was 
a friend of his boys, was likely enough to be feeling 
glum; but Mrs. Gommet’s attitude baffled him; he 
failed utterly to see why she need feel herself to be 
in particular danger; he considered her fears dispro- 
portionate. But, he argued excusingly, she did not 
know the Indians as he and Gommet knew them; to 
her they were all like Tapetu, terrifying and incom- 
prehensible, a strange people to be feared and dis- 
trusted and never entirely understood. 

He wandered further than he had any idea of. 
When he returned the engineer’s house was in dark- 
ness ; its inmates had gone to bed. He let himself in 
and struck a match to light himself to the sitting- 
room. To his amazement while he was engaged in 
lighting the lamp Mrs. Gommet suddenly appeared in 
the door-way, with only a wrapper over her night- 
dress, and her hair in disarray. She looked extraor- 
dinarily young and pretty in the uncertain light. 


272 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


“It’s only me, Tony,” she said, in low, tremulous 
tones. “Joe’s asleep. I came out to ask you if you 
had secured the door.” 

He stared at her, blinking like an owl abruptly 
confronted with a strong light. Never since he had 
been with Gommet had they troubled to secure any- 
thing. 

“I haven’t,” he answered. “But I will, if you 
wish it.” 

He turned as he spoke and went out into the pas- 
sage. He shot the bolt and then came back. Mrs. 
Gommet was standing where he had left her, with her 
hand resting upon the table. Something in her atti- 
tude reminded him of Alieta; Alieta had stood very 
much like that one evening after she had dressed his 
hand. The familiarity of the pose softened him to- 
wards this other woman who in most respects was 
so utterly different. 

“Go back to bed,” he said soothingly, “and have 
no fear. Neither Joe nor I would let anyone harm 
you.” 

She drew nearer to him and touched his arm. Her 
hair brushed his shoulder. He was conscious of 
the smell of warm, soft flesh as she leaned towards 
him. 

“Joe’s asleep — and drunk,” she whispered. . . . 
“Oh ! it’s good to have a man at hand one can depend 
on at a time like this.” 

Suddenly at her words, at her touch, perhaps be- 
cause of that sweet subtle smell of her, a demon 
rose in the man. She represented for him woman- 
hood, and on that night he was sex-hungry, and 
hopeless, and miserable. He was primitive man gov- 
erned by primitive instincts, and the hour and the 
environment accentuated her natural charm. He 
seized her hands and crushed them in his. He drew 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 273 

her to him. She swayed towards him, unresisting. 
The loosened wrapper fell back; her nightdress was 
unfastened at the neck, and the long line of her throat, 
white and graciously full, showed seductively in the 
lamplight. He seized her roughly. He held her to 
him, and bending his head, he kissed her madly with 
hot, impassioned lips. . . . 

Then suddenly he remembered. . . . He remem- 
bered Alieta, and his love for her, — the love he was 
dishonouring ; he remembered Gommet, the man 
whose friendship he had won, and whom he respected 
and liked; and he felt ashamed. What bestial im- 
pulse had moved him to set at naught every sense of 
honour and good-feeling which he had ever known ? 

“Oh, I say!” he muttered, releasing her. “I don’t 
know what made me do that. ... I beg your par- 
don, Mrs. Gommet. . . . Forgive me. . . . I — I think 
I am not quite myself to-night.” 

He never quite remembered what happened after 
that. He had an idea that Mrs. Gommet said some- 
thing, though he could not recollect what it was ; then 
she had glided out through the door, like a pale ghost 
flitting in the shadows, and he was left alone in that 
room of memories, seeing Alieta’s face, and hearing 
her voice, and smelling always that sweet, seductive 
odour of warm human flesh. . . . 

Humanity at the best is but frail, governed by odd, 
inexplicable impulses which, latent and often un- 
guessed at, lie at the root of our natures. 

There was no sleep for Heckraft after that. At 
sunrise he rose, and saddling his horse, went for a 
ride. He did not return for breakfast, which in the 
unsettled state of affairs passed without remark. It 
was only Mrs. Gommet who suspected the real rea- 
son for his absence. She believed that his sense of 


274 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


the fitness of things made him reluctant to meet her 
in the presence of her husband. The situation was 
not without its humorous side for her; and it thrilled 
her pleasantly to recall the scene of the previous 
night. Tony was hopelessly in love with her, that was 
evident. While not actually in love with him, her 
vanity was gratified to the extent of finding his hom- 
age very agreeable, even when it passed the bounds 
of honourable restraint. 

Gommet strolled across to the works during the 
morning, but there was nothing doing, and before 
noon he returned to the house. None of the Indians 
were at work, and Johnson, evidently distrusting him, 
had sent no word to him of his intentions, nor com- 
manded his co-operation. That on the whole was sat- 
isfactory, because he felt little inclination to assist him 
in his methods of settling the disturbance. Left to 
themselves, he did not doubt that he and the manager 
would have weathered this storm at very small loss 
to the firm. But the firm had taken the matter out 
of his hands, and, save that he was sorry for his 
boys, he did not care much what resulted from their 
action. He felt that it was fairly safe to conjecture 
that young Johnson would make a hash of things. 

“Why don’t you go and see what’s doing, Joe?” his 
wife asked him, as the long morning wore unevent- 
fully away. She was restless, as animals are restless 
before the coming of a storm; his inactivity irritated 
her. 

“Why should I?” he demanded, without looking up 
from the paper he was reading. 

“Tony is evidently in it,” was all she said. 

“Tony is an officious fool,” Gommet answered. “He 
ought to wait until he is sent for.” 

Mrs. Gommet pondered this. 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 275 

“It’ll mean the sack for you,” she said at last. 

“I’ve got my marching orders already,” Gommet 
replied. “And I’m jolly glad of it. I can work for 
old Johnson, but I can’t stick his cub.” 

Mrs. Gommet stared at him in wide-eyed amaze- 
ment. 

“Does that mean we shall go to Nooitgedacht?” she 
asked. 

“Yes; it works out at that, I imagine.” 

“Oh! I’m glad,” she cried. 

“So am I. But we’ll have to go easy for a time. 
Nooitgedacht is not a paying concern yet.” 

“I don’t care,” she said, and added with bitter 
vehemence, — “I hate this place.” 

He nodded sympathetically. He hated it too. He 
had brought his young wife there ; from there he had 
lost her. True, she had come back to him; but 
nothing could wipe out the memory of those five bit- 
ter years, years in which it seemed to him all the hap- 
piness of his previous life had been wiped out. Those 
wasted years had left their mark upon his soul. 

And then, breaking in upon the silence which had 
fallen between them, with an intrusive clatter that 
awoke the drowsy stillness of the sunny noonday, 
came the sound of thudding hoofs. Gommet looked 
up swiftly. Mrs. Gommet passed him and went to the 
window. 

“It’s Tony,” she cried, and stepped out upon the 
stoep. 

Gommet rose, and followed her. Thundering along 
the dusty road, on the animal that had served him 
ill on more than one occasion, rode Heckraft. He 
galloped right up to the house and drew rein abruptly 
below the stoep. He did not dismount. Dust-soiled 
and haggard-eyed, he looked up at Gommet, as the 


276 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


latter leaned down towards him, puzzled and inquir- 
ing: 

“Turn out, Joe,” he cried incoherently. “He’s rais- 
ing Cain. . . . He’s for driving every blessed Indian 
off the place.” 


XXXI 


G OMMET gazed with exasperating coolness at 
the excited, dishevelled figure of the manager 
who, from his appearance, might have been 
up all night and engaged in any desperate enterprise. 
He was puzzled to think why Tony need mix him- 
self up in the affair, which was no concern of his, 
after all. 

“If the boys won’t work,” was all he vouchsafed 
in response, “Johnson is justified from his point of 
view in turning them off.” 

“Man, you don’t understand,” Heckraft exclaimed 
sharply. “He’s ejecting them with violence. He has 
got a gang of Kaffirs, and they have flogged the boys 
out from their quarters, and are driving them off the 
place.” 

He held up a hand. 

“They’re coming this way,” he almost shouted, 
heading his horse round smartly. “Somebody ought 
to stop it; it’s a scandal.” 

“Wait a bit,” Gommet called to him. “Are you 
armed ?” 

“Armed! No.” 

“Hold hard, and I’ll fetch a revolver. No one who 
wasn’t a born fool would mix himself up in a melie 
of this sort without some means of defence.” 

But whether or no the manager heard him, he did 
not stop. He turned his horse and galloped off to 
meet the excited rush of dark, hurrying figures that 

2 77 


278 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


swarmed along the dusty road. Behind the strag- 
gling procession of Indian men and women and chil- 
dren, whooping and flourishing sticks, followed a 
crowd of natives with Johnson riding in their midst. 

“Fool!” muttered Gommet, and swung round to 
find his wife standing at his elbow, with frightened, 
dilated eyes fixed on this surge of angry humanity : 
every man among them, whether native or Indian, 
seemed to her to threaten personal and imminent vio- 
lence. 

“You won’t leave me, Joe?” she cried, clinging to 
his arm. “I’m frightened.” 

“Nothing to be frightened at,” Gommet said. 
“There isn’t a boy there would harm you. And 
they’ve something else to think about.” 

He glanced back towards the scene. Heckraft had 
galloped right into the midst of the stream of gesticu- 
lating, hurrying forms. Instantly they closed about 
him. It may have been that the riding whip he car- 
ried roused their suspicions as to his intentions, and 
excited their ire afresh. For the present the white 
man was their enemy, and, smarting from the in- 
dignity of their recent treatment, they thirsted for re- 
venge. They dragged the manager from his horse. 
Mrs. Gommet screamed as she saw him flung to the 
ground, and Gommet, with an oath, dashed into his 
bedroom and snatched up the revolver he had kept 
loaded in readiness since the beginning of the dis- 
turbance. Carrying it in his hand, he ran out on to 
the stoep. Mrs. Gommet was staring up the road. 
The figure of Heckraft was hidden now ; the Indians 
had closed in upon him where he lay in the road- 
way. But the thing which Gommet saw, the thing 
which his wife was watching, was the amazing in- 
activity of the hitherto aggressive party. Johnson had 
called a halt, and he, surrounded by his wondering 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 279 


Kaffirs, was watching the scene and making no at- 
tempt to interfere. 

“Good God!” cried Gommet. “He’s letting them 
kill him.” 

At his words, hate leapt into the eyes of the woman, 
fixed on the big, motionless figure of Johnson, seated 
negligently in the saddle with loosened rein, the right 
hand, which grasped a loaded stick, resting upon his 
thigh. She turned suddenly, with an unaccountable 
impulse, and touched her husband’s arm. 

“That is the man who caused my ruin,” she said. 

She did not know whether he heard her, whether, if 
he heard, he took in the significance of her words. He 
brushed past her, and swung himself off the stoep, and 
ran up the road, bareheaded, his revolver in his 
hand. Mrs. Gommet saw the sunlight glint on the 
weapon as he ran, and she wondered vaguely why 
he did not fire. She saw Johnson’s figure stiffen 
in the saddle as the engineer advanced, and his 
hand close with spasmodic suddenness on the stick he 
held. Oddly enough, she no longer felt afraid. She 
was watching with the detachment of an ordinary 
spectator the enactment of a drama, and wonder- 
ing with a thrill of nervous excitement, whether Joe 
would be in time to save the fallen man from 
death. 

Then the wish came to her amid the confused 
jumble of thought that she had not parted with that 
impulsive confidence. She hoped that her husband 
had not heard. Save when a wrong may be righted 
through speech, silence is a golden rule. . . . 

Her mind swung back again from her own con- 
cerns to the immediate present. She became once 
more acutely alive to the danger of the man lying 
helpless in the road at the mercy of an angry, excited 
crowd, which, it seemed to her, watching the press 


280 valley of a thousand hills 


of dark, swaying figures, was bent on trampling him 
to death. 

And then Gommet reached the scene, not a moment 
too soon. The human wall opened out to allow him 
to pass, as dealing heavy blows impartially with an 
iron fist, he cleared a passage and reached the mana- 
ger’s side. 

Mafuza, and a few of the older men, had sur- 
rounded Heckraft, and were keeping the press back. 
With great difficulty they had prevented one or two 
of the more infuriated Indians, whose dark shoulders 
smarted from the lashing they had received, from 
doing the white man to death with their knives. 

As the crowd opened out, Heckraft got upon his 
feet. He was dusty and trampled, but otherwise 
unhurt. Gommet gave him one look to assure him- 
self on this point, and then briefly harangued the 
now sullen mob. Gommet understood his boys, and 
they understood him ; not a Coolie among them would 
have injured the engineer. They listened to him, 
scowling and defiant, the discontent breaking forth 
in low mutterings of threats, which he saw fit to ig- 
nore. He told Mafuza to lead them on to the station, 
and promised to meet and parley with them there. 

Then, with Heckraft standing at his shoulder, he 
turned about and faced Johnson, who, cheated of his 
hope, indeed confident expectation, of seeing his enemy 
settled finally for him by the foolish mob whose 
frenzy he had roused, rode forward again, urging 
his Kaffirs to a renewal of attack. He would show 
Gommet and the prig of a manager how little their 
interference counted. If they didn’t get out of his 
path he would ride them down. 

But his assurance met with a rude check when he 
found himself suddenly looking into the barrel of 
Gommet’s revolver. He threw up his right arm in- 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 281 


stinctively, and swerved his horse to one side; at 
the same moment, Heckraft, realising Gommet’s in- 
tention, knocked up the levelled weapon. 

“Not that, Joe!” he cried. “It’s not worth it.” 

Gommet tried to shake him off. 

“You're white livered. . . . The beast would have 
seen you butchered,” he said, and jerking his arm 
free, raised the weapon once more. He fired, but the 
bullet flew wide into the sunny air; a second time, 
Heckraft, hampering his movements, had spoilt his 
aim. 

Johnson, as he galloped into safety, followed by 
his disorganised band of Kaffirs, who had not reck- 
oned on the development of European opposition and 
indiscriminate firing, little guessed that he owed his 
life that morning to the belief which Heckraft fos- 
tered that it was a life Alieta loved. He had spared 
the man’s life because, for that reason alone, it ap- 
peared to him valuable. 

As the distance widened between him and his 
enemy, frustrated in his desire for vengeance, Gom- 
met turned savagely on the man who had baulked 
him, and struck him heavily in the face. 

“Blast your interference!” he snarled. . . . “That 
man ruined my wife.” 

He wheeled about and left the manager to recover 
from the shock of this startling intelligence, which 
had knocked him aback mentally, as greatly as the 
blow that had laid his cheek open, had staggered him 
physically. He was quicker to recover his bodily 
balance than he was to readjust his ideas. Gommet’s 
words hammered in his ears and stunned him. He 
stared blankly after the lean, retreating figure of the 
engineer. An odd impulse prompted him to follow 
after him and apologise for his impertinent blunder- 
ing; the next moment he realised the ridiculous im- 


282 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


practicability of that idea, and abandoned it as absurd. 
He continued to stare along the road. Beyond the 
engineer, in straggling file, marched the Indians, mak- 
ing for the station, their bare feet stirring up the 
dust as they walked. Gommet, he observed, passed 
his house and followed them. 

Then, abruptly, his attention was diverted. He be- 
came conscious of his hurt, unpleasantly reminded 
of it by the blood which ran down his face, and 
splashed into the dust in big drops. He took out his 
handkerchief and attempted to staunch it. 

“Beastly mess, ,, he muttered, aware that the hand- 
kerchief was becoming rapidly soaked. 

Then, feeling that he must wash off the blood, he 
walked swiftly back to the house. Mrs. Gommet met 
him as he entered. He had hoped to get to his room 
unobserved, being in no mood to suffer questioning 
or sympathy. He had an idea that she would want 
to bathe his wound, or would fuss over him in other 
ways, and he recoiled from the thought of being 
handled by her. But Mrs. Gommet hated blood. She 
shrank back at sight of him. 

“You’re hurt,” she exclaimed, giving utterance to 
the obvious in the manner of one imparting informa- 
tion. 

She knew quite well how Heckraft had received 
the injury. She had been watching and had seen the 
blow struck. 

“It’s more showy than important,” he returned. 

Mrs. Gommet was manifestly curious and ill at 
ease. She longed to ask him why Joe had dealt him 
that savage blow. The scene in the road had been 
so swift of action, so confused and hurried, that 
she had only imperfectly followed the rapid move of 
events. But one thing seemed certain: Joe had under- 
stood what she had told him; he had attempted to 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 283 


punish her seducer, and had failed through Heckraft’s 
intervention. How much, she wondered, did Heckraft 
know or suspect of her past relations with the man 
whose life he had prevented her husband from tak- 
ing? 

Heckraft went on to his own room. She let him go, 
and waited in the sitting-room until, after a long 
while, he came back, washed and clean, with a dis- 
figuring piece of sticking-plaster over his broken 
cheek, and an eye that appeared to be withdrawing 
itself from observation behind new and unfamiliar 
contours that were steadily changing the appearance 
of one side of his face. She gazed at him, sur- 
prised and openly dismayed; the alteration in his ap- 
pearance almost made a stranger of him; and that 
haughty, inaccessible, retreating eye, surveying her 
remotely from behind its fleshy entrenchment, em- 
barrassed her oddly. It seemed to her that that un- 
familiar eye was gifted with a keener insight in pro- 
portion to its circumscribed range: she felt that it 
disapproved of her. 

“Shall I get you anything?” she asked tentatively, 
trying to dodge the eye. . . . “Whisky ?” 

He laughed. 

“I’m not so sick as I look,” he replied, and felt his 
swollen face. 

She pushed a chair towards him. 

“Do sit down. You must be feeling giddy.” 

He thanked her, and seated himself. He wished 
that she would go and leave him alone; he wanted 
to think. Things had happened in such a hurry that 
he had not had time to adjust his ideas. But it was 
being borne in upon him with slow and dogged insist- 
ence that he was justified, indeed called upon, to 
make use of the knowledge that had come to him, — 
been thrust upon him, as it were. He had got his 


284 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


chance. . . . But had he the moral courage to take it? 
.... It was not a pleasant nor an easy task he con- 
templated, and, in view of the fact that he loved 
Alieta, he was not positive that it was strictly credit- 
able either. He felt that it would have been im- 
measurably easier if he had not cared so much. How 
can a man, when he loves a woman, tell her ugly 
truths about another man whom she has admitted to 
him is dear to her? He was going to hurt her badly, 
— and yet, if he refrained from hurting her now, she 
would marry Johnson, and in his opinion that would 
be a bigger injury in the long run. 

"Where’s Joe gone?” Mrs. Gommet inquired, break- 
ing in on his train of thought. 

He glanced up with quick impatience. 

"Only down to the station.” 

Mrs. Gommet frowned. 

"After those horrid Indians, I suppose. ... I won- 
der he troubles.” 

She moved about the room irresolutely, crossed to 
the window, and then returned to Heckraft’s side. 

"Tony,” she said, with her hand on the back of his 
chair, "what made Joe do it?” 

He started. 

"Do what?” 

"That,” she said, and stretched forth a finger and 
lightly touched his cheek. 

"You saw?” he asked. 

"Yes, I saw. I was watching.” 

"It was done in the heat of the moment,” he an- 
swered evasively. "He didn’t mean it.” 

"But what made him do it?” she persisted. 

"We differed in opinion,” he answered. "And I 
suppose we were both rather excited.” 

She laid a hand on his shoulder. 

"You won’t tell me,” she returned with gentle re- 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 285 

proach in her tones. ... “I believe it had something 
to do with me.” 

He looked up at her sharply. 

“Well, I rather regard that smack in the face,” he 
replied, “as something I earned. . . . Your husband 
is a good sort, Mrs. Gommet. You may rest as- 
sured that he’ll always fight your battles, anyhow.” 

She looked back at him uncertainly, and was again 
uncomfortably conscious of the raking power of that 
nearly closed eye. It was as though he regarded 
her with one eye shut, the better to focus his vision. 

“You’re not thinking still about — last night?” she 
said softly. 

“No,” he answered; “my part in that was suf- 
ficiently discreditable for me to wish to forget it.” 

“But I wasn’t angry — not very,” she said. 

“In that you display a greater generosity than I 
deserve,” he returned, and Mrs. Gommet fancied that 
the eye waxed more severe. 

He rose with the intention of putting an end to a 
conversation which he found distasteful in the ex- 
treme. Mrs. Gommet, still confident in her vanity, 
that he was schooling his passion for her from some 
scruple of honour, and having no such scruples her- 
self, stood in his path. 

“Don’t you think you are rather quixotic? — just a 
little foolish,” she urged. “What is there in a kiss, 
after all? . . . I don’t suppose Joe confines his kissing 
to me. ... I wouldn’t wish it. I daresay when she 
was nursing him he sometimes kissed Alieta.” 

Heckraft stared at her, his face flushing a dull red. 

“I’ll venture to assert that he did nothing of the 
sort,” he answered shortly. 

Something in the quality of his tone recalled with 
an unpleasant sense of conviction to Mrs. Gommet’s 
mind her husband’s assertion that Heckraft was in 


286 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


love with Alieta. She met his angry gaze with jealous, 
questioning eyes, and jerked out at him the abrupt 
monosyllable : 

“Why?” 

He pulled himself together, on his guard immedi- 
ately against self-betrayal, and yet, manlike, unable 
entirely to suppress his antagonism towards the barest 
hint of license where Alieta was concerned. 

“One doesn’t look for cheap sentimentalism from 
Joe, nor from Miss Van der Vyver,” he answered. 
“You seem to forget how long she was in this house, 
and how she earned our respect and gratitude. She 
will always represent for me womanhood at her 
highest.” 

“Tony,” Mrs. Gommet cried with affected lightness 
of manner, catching at his sleeve and pulling at it 
insistently. “I believe that you are in love with Alieta 
Van der Vyver.” 

He hesitated for a moment. Against his disin- 
clination to avow the sacred truth to this soulless 
little being rose the desire to proclaim hik passion be- 
fore all the world; the stronger inclination overruled 
the lesser. 

“Yes, I am,” he admitted. 

For fully half a minute Mrs. Gommet made no 
answer. She remained still grasping his arm, staring 
at him dully. Then she released his coat sleeve, 
and turned abruptly away. 

“Poor Tony!” she said with soft insincerity, and 
added, after a pause: “I should have been truly glad, 
only that I know from herself that her love is given 
elsewhere. ” 


XXXII 


W HEN Gommet returned from the station, 
flushed and weary, he found Heckraft alone 
in the sitting-room, and, unprepared for the 
sight of the latter’s swollen countenance, surveyed him 
with comprehending, disconcerted gaze. 

“Oh, I say! Did I do that?” he asked. 

Heckraft disposed of the matter summarily. 

“I got in the way of your fist,” he answered. “It’s 
nothing much, — not more than I deserved, anyhow. 
What did you arrange with Mafuza? You saw him, 
of course?” 

Gommet dropped into a seat and stared about him 
gloomily. 

“I went along for the purpose. . . . He’s coming to 
work for us, — he, and his boys, when the strike’s 
settled. ... I don’t know how it will be with you, but 
I get chucked over this business, and I’m glad of it. 
I wouldn’t work for Johnson any longer on any con- 
sideration. I shall go to Nooitgedacht and work the 
place up.” 

Heckraft watched him sympathetically, understand- 
ing in a measure what he was feeling. 

“I don’t think I shall go to Nooitgedacht — yet,” he 
jerked out. “I’m not sure that I shall ever be any- 
thing more than a sleeping partner in the place. . . . 
I’m rather sick of the whole thing.” 

Gommet looked up in surprise, a certain eager hope- 
fulness in his eyes. He liked Anthony Heckraft, but 
he was of the opinion that a triangular household 
287 


288 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


was not altogether a success, and since his wife had 
returned to him and thereby lessened the expense con- 
ditional upon double housekeeping, he felt equal to 
running Nooitgedacht on his own, and was anxious 
to make the attempt ; only the belief that Heckraft too 
was keen on the project had made him diffident about 
proposing the dissolution before. Since Heckraft gave 
him the opening he was not slow to seize upon it. 

“That’s as you like, of course,” he said quickly. 
“I’m quite willing to run the place for you, and to 
buy you out after a decent interval. ... I rather 
hustled you into it, if I remember rightly.” 

“Oh ! I don’t know about that. I was quite glad of 
the chance. Only since then, things have happened 
— I don’t know. ... I don’t feel about it as I did.” 

Mrs. Gommet came in at that moment, and put an 
end to the talk. She asked innumerable questions, and 
flitted about incessantly, a restless, purposeless little 
figure, inventing trivial occupations as an excuse for 
her lingering. Gommet watched her with grave, medi- 
tative eyes. He did not, Heckraft noticed, address 
a single remark to her, but when she spoke to him 
he answered with a wonderful tenderness in his tones. 
Knowing what he did, Heckraft felt an immense re- 
spect for, and sympathy with the man. 

He slipped out of the room and left husband and 
wife alone. Then, with no particular aim in view, 
he set out to walk up the hill, past the deserted wat- 
tle plantations where the stripped bark lay drying in 
the sunshine. He spent many busy, but compara- 
tively futile hours in destroying the cone-shaped nests 
of the bagworm that hung to the twigs of the trees. 
In his preoccupation he missed the dinner hour, and 
having previously missed breakfast, returned at tea- 
time, weary and hungry, with a highly discoloured, 
and almost closed eye. But Gommet and his wife had 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 289 


had their talk out, and the engineer at least was look- 
ing happier for it. 

Earlier in the day Mrs. Gommet had written, and 
sent off by special messenger from the hotel, a let- 
ter to Alieta. She awaited with secret impatience a 
reply to that letter, which was in essence a request 
for Alieta’s presence. She felt confident as to the 
issue. Considering all things, Alieta was not likely 
to fail her in this. 

Alieta answered the letter in person, arriving on 
horseback the following afternoon at an hour when 
she judged the men would be out of the way. They 
were out. Gommet was at the station, sending off 
high-handed answers to the peremptory messages he 
received over the wires from Durban, and Heckraft 
was mooning about aimlessly, trying to kill time. The 
strike ha'd left him at loose ends, nor had he the 
satisfaction, which Gommet was experiencing, of in- 
dulging a personal animus, and getting some of his 
own back in return. 

Johnson had gone back to Durban to find a cap- 
able manager, and someone to take Gommet’ s place, 
and work the plantation with Kaffir labour. In the 
meanwhile Gommet and the present manager were 
awaiting developments. 

Mrs. Gommet, who was on the watch for Alieta, 
saw her arrive, and ran out to meet her. She held 
the rein while Alieta dismounted. 

“How good of you to come so promptly,” she 
cried. . . . “But I knew you would. . . . And there’s 
nobody to take your horse.” 

She looked round irresolutely, the reins still in her 
hand. Alieta took them from her, and hitched 
them to a limb of a tree. 

“It doesn’t matter,” she said; ‘Til be returning 
shortly.” 


2 9 o VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


She slipped a hand through Mrs. Gommet’s arm, 
and walked with her into the house. 

“So you are actually servantless ?” she said. “How 
extremely awkward! Will I send old Katje to you? 
. . . She is equal to a number of less competent 
maids.” 

“Of course not,” Mrs. Gommet answered quickly, 
unwilling to lay herself under further obligation to 
Alieta. “It’s kind of you,” she added, with a desire 
not to appear ungracious ; “but your mother would 
not like it. And I can manage. . . . I’ve been man- 
aging without house servants since the trouble be- 
gan. 

“I had no idea,” Alieta said, and turned to find the 
other woman regarding her with a fixed and wonder- 
ing scrutiny. Mrs. Gommet was trying to puzzle out 
what there was about this girl which attracted the 
homage of men, and held it. The secret of Alietajs 
power was possibly to be explained in that it was un- 
conscious and unsought. “Why didn’t you come out 
to the farm, as I wished?” she asked. “This sort of 
thing,” — she made a wide gesture with her arm, in- 
dicating the strike area with a comprehensive sweep, 
— “is better left to the men. They are responsible 
for these muddles, and should be left to settle 
them.” 

This was a new view to Mrs. Gommet. She looked 
at the speaker with undisguised surprise. 

“But they can’t manage everything,” she said. . . . 
“there’s the home, you know.” 

It ran through Alieta’s mind to inquire how the 
home had fared during.its mistress’ absence, and since 
it had gone on during that unhappy period, why it 
could not continue on similar lines for a further time. 
But she did not put the thought into words. Instead 
she said: 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 291 


“Your husband could have shut up this house and 
gone to the hotel. ,, 

Mrs. Gommet shook her head. 

“He wouldn’t do that,” she answered. 

Alieta dropped her riding skirt, and seated herself 
in a chair near the open window of the sitting-room. 
She was beginning to wonder why, since Mrs. Gommet 
rejected all her propositions without even considering 
them, she should have sent for her, and been so urgent 
in her request for her presence. Mlrs. Gommet did 
not leave her long in doubt as to her object. She 
came abruptly to her point. Seating herself facing 
Alieta, she leaned towards her in a confidential atti- 
tude that suggested caution, — a fear of being over- 
heard, though there was no one there to hear. 

“It was good of you to come so soon in answer to 
my letter,” she began, and paused, as though unde- 
cided how to proceed. 

Alieta filled the pause. 

“Naturally I came,” she returned gently. “You told 
me you were in great trouble. ... I don’t know 
whether I am right, but I imagine the trouble to be 
something apart from the strike.” 

Mrs. Gommet nodded. 

“It is,” she admitted. 

She hesitated again for a while, and during the 
waiting silence studied the fair face of her uncon- 
scious visitor with a jealous, furtive regard. The 
freshness of Alieta’s beauty, contrasting with her own 
faded prettiness, incensed her against her anew. Her 
anger made the present task easier. 

“I’m worried,” she said suddenly, — “And I want 
your advice. ... Joe has fallen out with Tony — Mr. 
Heckraft, I mean. It came to blows between them 
yesterday. Joe gave Mr. Heckraft a thrashing.” 

Alieta looked amazed. 


292 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 

“I must say Tony deserved what he got,” Mrs. 
Gommet added in dry, jerky sentences. She shifted 
her gaze in order to avoid Alieta’s astonished, horri- 
fied eyes. “He makes love to me. . . . Though I 
didn’t know that Joe suspected that. . . . The other 
night he kissed me. ... It was wrong of him, and 
I was angry. But I can’t think how Joe guessed. . . . 
I wouldn’t have had him know for the world.” 

She lifted her eyes again. Alieta averted her face. 
She looked away from the speaker, out at the sunny 
prospect, with dismayed, unseeing eyes. All her world, 
her simple beliefs, her ideals, were tumbling about 
her feet. Her face hardened, became fixed, like a 
mask. As in a dream she heard Mrs. Gommet saying : 

“Men are all alike. I don’t know why they are 
like that, but they are. . . . Some men don’t seem 
able to let a woman alone.” 

Alieta attempted to digest this logic, but finding 
it altogether unpalatable, finally rejected it, and 
shifted the talk from generalities back to a more per- 
sonal note. Mrs. Gommet’s confidence had chilled 
her. She was trembling violently. Her ungloved 
hands, lying in her lap, fluttered nervously, the fin- 
gers picked at her riding-skirt with spasmodic incon- 
sequence. By an effort of will, she forced them into 
quiet, and faced round again. 

“I can’t understand,” she said slowly, feeling that 
the conduct of which Mrs. Gommet complained was 
inconsistent with Heckraft’s nature, and yet unable 
altogether to discredit what she heard. “I should not 
have supposed that Mr. Heckraft would stoop to that 
sort of thing. . . . It’s — dishonourable.” 

“Oh! when a man’s in love — or fancies he is in 
love — he doesn’t stop at much,” Mrs. Gommet re- 
plied. 

Alieta flushed. She failed to detect the malice in 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 293 


the unnecessary confidence. She was ignorant of hav- 
ing roused Mrs. Gommet’s jealousy; had it been ex- 
plained to her, it is doubtful that she would have un- 
derstood. But she felt enormously disconcerted and 
distressed. An emotion, not remotely related to anger, 
was getting the upper hand, till it temporarily sub- 
merged her pain. She allowed a flash of it to re- 
veal itself to Mrs. Gommet. 

“Couldn’t you manage to prevent men from making 
love to you?” she asked. 

Mrs. Gommet appeared mildly amused. 

“You wouldn’t talk in that strain if you had ever 
encountered Tony in one of his masterful moods. . . . 
Of course I try to stop him. . . . And I’m angry with 
him. . . . He’s repentant enough afterwards. But 
what can one do? . . . He can’t help it, I suppose, 
poor fellow!” 

“Well, I don’t see,” Alieta said abruptly, with a 
swift change of front, “what this has to do with me 
exactly. ... I can’t see how I can help. It’s plain 
to me that this matter rests with yourself. . . . An 
outsider can’t interfere.” 

“You can help with advice,” Mrs. Gommet said 
plaintively. ... “I don’t know what to do.” 

“Oh !” Alieta spoke with some impatience. “Surely 
there isn’t any difficulty as to that? . . . And how 
should I advise you? . . , Men don’t make love to 
me.” 

Mrs. Gommet smiled. 

“Perhaps you are a little obtuse, and don’t see it,” 
she returned. 

The fighting spirit of her ancestors, the old pio- 
neers, who had won their way in the dark conti- 
nent, and maintained their right to a share in the 
conquered land after years of struggle and hardship, 
arose in Alieta’s breast. She looked squarely at the 


294 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


speaker, lolling gracefully in complacent prettiness in 
her chair, a smile of malicious vanity parting her 
lips. After all, what was there apart from her beauty 
to fear in Alieta? Men might enjoy looking at her, 
but they would go elsewhere to be amused. . . . 

“A woman can always stop a man from becom- 
ing a nuisance/’ Alieta replied coldly. “I may not be 
so experienced as you, but I know that. I think that 
much of the blame lies with yourself.” 

“Of course, if that is the view you take, there is 
nothing more to be said,” Mrs. Gommet returned, as- 
suming a pathetic, almost childish tone. . . . “You’ve 
been so kind up to now. ... I thought you might 
help. But you’re too cold, too intensely practical, to 
understand.” 

Alieta might have replied, and with truth, that she 
was neither, but that she was a woman who had 
learnt to practise restraint. Instead she remarked, al- 
most humbly: 

“I am sorry. But we see this thing so very differ- 
ently.” 

“Yes,” Mrs. Gommet answered. “You take the 
man’s part, and blame the woman.” 

The girl stiffened in her seat. 

“That isn’t just,” she returned. “And I don’t be- 
lieve you think that, really.” 

She did not add that in her heart she blamed this 
particular man far more, held him more gravely re- 
sponsible for his disloyal conduct than ever she 
would the woman, whose shallow nature, she realised, 
was incapable of a proper appreciation of the moral 
values concerned in the lowering of big things to the 
level of trivial philandering. It was all fair sport to 
the woman, an idle amusement exacted by vanity. 
But the man’s share in it was different 

Alieta’s mind swung back to the gloom of a win- 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 295 


ter’s afternoon, to the dimly lit shed, and the strong, 
tender look in the man’s eyes when he set all the rules 
of the game at defiance and told her simply of his 
love. Again, she saw him in the evening, his figure 
outlined against the leaping flames on the hearth, re- 
called the sorrow in .his face, its settled gravity, as 
he talked to her quietly in fragmentary sentences of 
the unalterable quality of his love. . . . Was all that 
meaningless? ... a stringing together of empty 
phrases that came from the lips, and no deeper? . . . 

She looked up suddenly, and surprised Mrs. Gom- 
met studying her with an impertinent curiosity that 
made her colourless cheek warm brightly. It flashed 
across her then for the first time that this woman 
suspected something of her feeling for Heckraft. She 
shifted her position, and turning again abruptly, gazed 
through the open window. Against her volition her 
eyes wandered to the drying sheds, and memory 
stirred in their depths once more and accentuated 
their pain. 

“When do you think of getting married?” Mrs. 
Gommet asked suddenly, apropos of nothing. 

“I don’t know,” Alieta said slowly. 

“I thought perhaps Mr. Johnson had fixed matters 
up when he was here. Of course you saw him?” 

“Oh! yes.” 

Mrs. Gommet regarded the speaker with an exas- 
perated frown. It was so Dutch, she reflected, so 
disingenuous, this closeness about one’s affairs. 
Alieta never opened out to her. 

“I saw him pass in the car,” she remarked. “I 
supposed he would spend most of his time at Odsani.” 

“He was too busy,” Alieta returned, “to have much 
time to spare.” 

“Too busy quarrelling,” Mrs. Gommet snapped. 

Alieta flushed, 


296 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


“I’m afraid his business wasn’t altogether peace- 
ful/’ she allowed. 

“He’s split with Joe. . . . We are going out to 
Nooitgedacht.” 

Mrs. Gommet rose, and stood, leaning out of the 
window, a discontented expression in her eyes. 

“Nooitgedacht is even more buried than this,” she 
complained. “At least, one has the station here. I 
don’t know how I shall stand it.” 

She swung around on Alieta with passionate unex- 
pectedness. 

“Why couldn’t you have left me alone?” she cried. 
“I was happy enough until you blundered into my 
life. ... I didn’t want to come back.” She beat 
her hands together in a frenzy of impotent anger, re- 
gardless of what the girl, observing her with troubled, 
apprehensive eyes, thought of this outbreak of tem- 
per. “Do you suppose I shall make Joe happy? . . . 
Do you suppose I can settle down to this drab, dull 
life? ... I can’t. . . . It’s absurd. . . . It’s just bury- 
ing oneself. . . . You ought to have left me alone.” 

“I didn’t know,” Alieta returned, stating a simple 
fact with no attempt at self- justification, “that any- 
one lived simply to please oneself. If I had thought 
you were like that I wouldn’t have gone to you.” 

“Well, I am like that,” Mrs. Gommet answered. 
“Why shouldn’t one please oneself? . . . I’m like 
that. . . . I’m going to please myself — always.” 

She broke off with an abrupt, short laugh. 

“What a fool I am ! I don’t know what makes me 
talk so. I’ve allowed you to tie my life into knots, 
and now I talk of cutting them through, with no means 
of doing it. . . . I hope my case will be a lesson to 
you in future to mind your own business.” 

“Yes,” Alieta answered quietly. “It has taught me 
that, at least.” 


/ 


XXXIII 


A nthony heckraft fought things out with 

his conscience and finally made up his mind — 
or rather confirmed his preconceived opinion 
— that it was right and fitting that he should go to 
Alieta, and put his case to her anew by virtue of the 
knowledge that had come to him unsought. It seemed 
to him, reviewing matters in the light of recent events, 
that fate had intentionally placed this knowledge in 
his hands, to be used in his own service, as well as 
for Alieta’s good. No man who loved a woman 
worthily would stand aside and let her give herself 
in ignorance into the care of a man of vicious life. 
With this end in view he set out for Odsani. 

He had not seen Alieta alone for some time, not 
in fact since the night on which he had gone out 
from her presence, and left her standing on the 
hearth before the leaping fire which Mambersad had 
kindled because the night was cold. The nights were 
cold no longer. The hot day darkened after sun- 
down, and the purple of the evening sky deepened, 
taking on richly sombre hues, against which the long 
golden light of the stars glowed with a warm in- 
tensity where they rose above the horizon and shot 
up over the hilltops with a perceptible velocity that 
appeared to decrease appreciatively as they soared and 
hung in the darkening sky. But the dusk brought no 
great sense of coolness, only a restful obscurity after 
the untempered glare of the sun. 

297 


298 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 

Heckraft chose the evening for going to Alieta, 
why, he could not have explained, unless he was in- 
fluenced by the feeling that the evening and early 
morning were the most beautiful hours of the day; 
and plainly he could not, do anything so irregular 
as pay his call at sunrise. 

He dismounted at the low gate which shut off the 
garden from the veld immediately surrounding it, 
and the cultivated land beyond. He hitched the rein 
of his horse to the paling, and opening the gate, 
walked up the path towards the house. Alieta was 
in the garden. He caught a glimpse of her white 
dress through the dark foliage of the orange trees, and 
quickened his steps till he stood beside her in the 
path, with the scent of the night flowers about them, 
the strong sweet scent which is one of the many 
sensuous charms of the African night. He counted 
himself lucky in finding her thus alone. Visions of a 
tedious evening, spent in the old people’s society, an 
evening of disjointed conversation which needed in- 
terpretation, until finally, as wearied as himself, the 
old folk went to bed, had been in his mind. He 
had prepared himself for it; but this meeting under 
the open sky, with no one to interfere and divide 
their attention, was a let off; and he realised as he 
went towards her how entirely distasteful the other 
arrangement seemed since he was no longer called 
upon to face it. One can brace oneself to any- 
thing, but let the simple situation offer, and the more 
difficult becomes impossible. 

Alieta looked round in surprise when she heard his 
approach, and he was at once made uncomfortably 
conscious of the livid yellows and purples of his in- 
jured eye, which he had hoped would pass unre- 
marked in the dusk, by the disconcerting concentra- 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 299 


tion of her gaze. He lifted his hat, and Alieta 
gave him her hand. 

“Will you — would you mind walking a little way 
with me?” he inquired diffidently, after their formal 
greeting. “Fve things to say to you. ... I want 
to talk with you alone.” 

She complied at once with the request. They passed 
beyond the gate, and wandered on to the open veld. 
It was a moonless night; the star-spangled heavens 
only dimly illumined the scene. Alieta was strangely 
silent, and, he felt, extraordinarily cold and detached. 
He tried to get nearer to her mentally, but every 
effort he made to drag down the new reserve which 
he recognised as a barrier between them met with 
a baffling resistance on her side. In spite of the check, 
he persevered in his attempt to win her understand- 
ing and sympathy. He did eventually impress her with 
a sense of his earnestness, and she walked beside 
him, following the worn, and ill-lit track, wondering 
about him, wondering about the confusing, contradic- 
tory conditions of life, and the manifold complex- 
ities of the human mind, — wondering, and finding no 
solution to the riddle. 

And then suddenly she was aware of his voice 
speaking beside her. He had made several inconse- 
quent, irrelevant remarks which had called for no 
particular attention or response from her ; but now he 
was saying something that mattered, something which 
concerned her vitally, and saying it with the manner 
of one who intends to be heard and answered. In a 
surprisingly direct way too he referred to his love 
for her. 

“It’s because I love you,” she heard him saying, 
and became conscious that she had missed the first 
part of his speech, the part which contained the text 
to the whole, “that I tell you this. I cannot let you 


300 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


marry this man, Alieta, in ignorance of his true char- 
acter.” 

Alieta looked at him swiftly. 

“What do you mean?” she asked. “I think I don’t 
quite understand.” 

“I mean,” he said quite bluntly, with his grave 
eyes on her face, “that Harold Johnson was Mrs. Gom- 
met’s lover. ... I learnt that quite recently. If I 
had known it sooner, I think — I believe it would 
have made a difference. Anyway, now I tell you 
because I must, because, even if you think it vile of 
me — and knowing that I’m interested, you may judge 
me hardly — I can’t let you blunder into this with 
your eyes shut, and so make a mess of your life.” 

For a space there was silence between them. Alieta 
walked beside him without speaking, her gaze 'fixed 
steadily ahead. She had had an ugly surprise in re- 
gard to this man before; but this, — this cool denun- 
ciation of another in accusing him of the sin he him- 
self had been guilty of, struck her as peculiarly 
mean. That he should stoop to such a course pained 
her far more than the news he imparted. She had 
believed him to be fine and straight and simple, a man 
with a big nature and a loyal heart, and she had 
now to admit her mistake. In the greater shock of 
disappointment in this man whom she loved, she 
scarcely realised the significance of what he told her. 
That was a side issue; it affected her less keenly. 
What was of paramount importance was that it was 
he who made this discreditable disclosure. Why 
need he have told her? ... he, of all the world? 

He moved nearer to her in the dragging silence 
which followed upon his speech. 

“My dear,” he said, with a grave tenderness in his 
tones, “I’ve hurt you. ... I knew I should. . . . But 
I’d rather hurt you, Alieta — badly, — I’d rather you 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 301 

thought me vile, than see you give your clean, pure 
life into the keeping of a man of licentious habits 
and loose principles. . . . My dear! . . . Fve hurt 
you. ... I’d have given my life to have prevented 
this.” 

“Yes; you’ve hurt me,” Alieta answered. 

She stood still and faced him, outwardly calm, 
though her heart was beating to suffocation, and the 
pulses in her throat were going like tiny hammers set 
in force by the machinery of the heart. . . . Why 
need he have told her? ... he, of all men? 

“I think you — it’s your own word, but I believe it 
was in my mind before you put it into my mouth — 
vile.” 

He gripped her wrists. 

“Don’t be unjust, Alieta,” he said. “So long as I 
believed him worthy of you I was ready to stand 
aside. I love you. I’ve loved you always — from the 
beginning. ... I love you enough to give you up. 
. . . But not to that man — now.” 

Alieta wrenched her hands away. 

“You are vile,” she said, — “mean. . . . You come 
to me with this tale of Harold Johnson with the 
marks still upon your face which Mr. Gommet placed 
there for making love to his wife. . . . How dare 
you come to me? . . . How dare you touch me?” 

Heckraft stared at her. 

“Absurd!” he cried. 

He flushed suddenly. 

“Did she tell you that?” he asked. 

“Oh! what does it matter,” Alieta said, “who told 
me?” 

“It doesn’t matter, of course,” he answered, — “be- 
cause it isn’t true.” 

Alieta kept under the wild rush of hope which 
surged up in her heart at his words; somehow or 


302 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 

other, Mrs. Gommet’s tale had carried conviction 
with it. 

“Do you deny that you kissed her?” she asked. 

“No. Unfortunately that’s true enough. . . . 
Though I can’t think how you got to hear of it. But 
there’s no more in it than that.” 

Alieta turned away with an air of disgust. 

“I don’t think there is any more to be said,” she 
remarked. The forced quiet of her manner deserted 
her. “How could you?” she broke forth. . . . “Oh! 
how could you? ... I thought better of you than 
that.” 

He followed her, fighting his rising anger with an 
effort, because of his great love, and his great need of 
her. He desired passionately to justify himself in 
her eyes. 

“Let me explain,” he said, — “if I can. Though I 
doubt you’ll understand. Women — women like your- 
self, who have never thought much about sex mat- 
ters — don’t understand easily. You are cold and hard 
and limited. . . . Don’t take affront at that, — it’s no 
slight. No man, I imagine, would wish his women- 
folk otherwise. It’s just the hard purity of women 
that keeps the world decent. We’re different, differ- 
ent in grain. We want things, — want them intensely. 
And we don’t practise sufficient restraint. I’ve wanted 
you. ... I want you now. I wanted you that night 
when I allowed myself to kiss Mrs. Gommet. I was 
hungry for you, and I didn’t see the remotest chance 
of ever getting you. She came to me in a moment of 
weakness. . . . She was just woman to me — woman 
in the abstract. ... I kissed her. I’ve regretted that 
since, regretted it enormously, because of my respect 
for her husband, — because, still more, of my respect 
for women in general, typified in yourself. I didn’t 
know you would hear of it. . . . I didn’t guess. . . . 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 303 

It’s immensely disconcerting to me. . . . Anyway, 
since you have heard, I want you to know the entire 
truth, instead of only the part which reflects dis- 
creditably. Alieta !” — He tried to take her hand 
again, but she drew instinctively away. — “I want you 
to try to see this thing as it is, instead of how it ap-. 
pears on the surface, — as something altogether abom- 
inable and dishonourable. I have never loved any 
woman but you/' 

“Don’t!” Alieta said. 

She averted her face from him; she did not want 
him to see the tears that welled in her eyes. 

“You don’t understand,” he muttered, hurt, and 

keenly disappointed. “I had thought But you 

don’t understand.” 

“No; I don’t understand,” she replied dully, and 
moved away and began to retrace her steps. 

He stood still, frustrated and angry, looking after 
her. An impulse to follow her, to make her under- 
stand, seized him; but in a crisis of this sort a man 
is apt to neglect his wisest impulses in yielding to 
natural chagrin. He turned about abruptly, and 
walked away from her, taking a circuitous route to 
where he had left his horse tethered to the garden 
gate, and unhitching the reins, mounted hastily and 
rode moodily away into the night. 

That was the finish of that, anyway, — the finish 
of life for him in the Valley of a Thousand Hills. 
He wished, wished from the bottom of his soul, that 
his wanderings had not taken him there, that he had 
never met her. Life, if uneventful and uninteresting 
before, had at least been less disturbing. Now that 
he had met her and learned to love her, he knew 
that no other woman’s love could mean the same to 
him. He was not an ardent man; sex did not domi- 
nate him to the extent that any mate would serve. 


30 4 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


He had painted his desires to her in exaggerated 
terms; purposely he had done this. He wished her 
to know the world as it was, and men as they were; 
the rest would come easier to her when she grasped 
these realities. But had he not done himself some 
injustice, he wondered, as he rode away. She was so 
coldly pure that the picture he had sketched for her 
would instinctively repel her. And it was not an 
accurate picture, so far at least as he was concerned. 
Until she had crossed his path he had felt no par- 
ticular call of sex, no unbridled desires. Alieta was 
the only woman he had ever wanted. But he wanted 
her intensely, with an almost painful urgency. And 
that night he had put her further from him than 
before. 


XXXIV 


T HE following day Alieta wrote to Harold 
Johnson. It was not an easy letter to write. 
With the memory of that recent painful scene 
between them very vividly before her, it was even 
an embarrassing letter. Had it hurt her more, this 
breaking with him irrevocably, she would have found 
the task, if more painful, assuredly less difficult. But 
she was quite candid with herself. This disgraceful 
thing which she had learnt concerning him affected 
her in an altogether more remote degree than Heck- 
raft’s share in the matter. That touched her on the 
raw, and set every nerve quivering. She realised, 
with concern at herself for having so lightly plighted 
her troth to this man, that nothing he could do would 
ever hurt her, cause her such anguish of soul, as the 
slightest deviation from the path of honour, the least 
lowering of the standard of good feeling on the part 
of the man she loved, — would always love, she now 
knew, no matter how he disappointed her, or fell 
short of the ideal she had formed of him. 

In writing her letter to Johnson, she did not con- 
demn him unheard. She gave him a chance to ex- 
plain, to deny the accusation, if he could. Oddly 
enough, she had not once challenged in her own mind 
the truth of the sordid charge. Little things that had 
puzzled her found elucidation in this story of his 
relations with Mrs. Gommet; situations in the past 
which had been inexplicable, which had seemed at 
305 


3 o6 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


the time too trivial to demand explanation, recurred 
to her now with startling vividness. Many things had 
puzzled her in the old days when he came to Inchanga, 
— moods, and disconnected phrases, and a sort of fur- 
tiveness, which now she understood. She realised 
instinctively that this thing was true. 

She recalled the day when he had, reluctantly and 
ungraciously, at her urgent request, driven her to the 
hotel at Maritzburg where Mrs. Gommet was; re- 
called Mrs. Gommet’s amazement, — her blank re- 
fusal to go back with him, — her hysterical weep- 
ing. . . . 

Her face flamed at the recollection, and her eyes 
hardened. How had he dared to subject her to that 
indignity? . . . 

‘‘If you can honestly deny this thing,” she wrote, 
“and care to do so, after reading this letter, you can 
come to see me ; otherwise I have no wish to see your 
face again. If this thing is true, nothing you can 
urge will persuade me into marrying you.” 

She returned him his ring, and waited. She ex- 
pected no answer from him, and none came. He 
accepted his dismissal, — not willingly; he simply had 
not the courage to face her. But her letter angered 
and exasperated him almost beyond endurance. It 
is an odd proof in support of the inconsistency of 
human nature, that the hard purity of a cold woman 
appeals more to the sensualist than the readier re- 
sponse of an ardent nature. It whets desire and in- 
creases the excitement of conquest. Alieta’s reluc- 
tant, passionless affection had given Harold Johnson 
a satisfaction greater than anything he had experi- 
enced in his guilty intercourse with Mrs. Gommet, 
whose response to his caresses had been readier, and 
had lacked nothing in warmth. 

In his chagrin, and wounded vanity, he went — as 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 307 

men of his type invariably drift to the nearest and 
surest haven which promises an anodyne for the pain 
of suffering pride — to Muriel Rath. His welcome, 
he knew beforehand, was assured. She was quite 
willing to accept him on any ground. It is doubtful 
had he told her the truth, and flung himself on her 
mercy, that he would have found a pardon difficult 
to win. His confession would not have disgusted 
her particularly. She cared for him as greatly as 
she could care for anyone, and she had been brought 
up to believe that things were permissible to men 
which nice women never heard of, would, if they 
heard, ignore. Her outlook on life was narrow, com- 
fortable and old-fashioned, and limited as was her 
intelligence. 

When Johnson proposed to her, rather after the 
manner of a man flinging a bone to a dog, and half 
begrudging his generosity, she accepted him grate- 
fully. She shared his confidence in considering her- 
self exceedingly luqky in his condescension. 

He dined with Ihe Raths one evening uninvited, 
and took her out on to the stoep to make his declara- 
tion. He had only received Alieta’s letter on the 
previous day, and he carried it still in his pocket. 

“Look here!” he said to the girl, as she struck a 
match for him and lighted his cigarette. “I think 
we pull rather well together, don’t you?” 

“I think we get on,” she answered, feeling em- 
barrassed and almost frightened by a certain quality 
in his manner which she had never noticed before. 

“That’s what I mean,” he said. “We hit it some- 
how. I don’t express myself well, but what I want 
to say is that I like you — enormously. You are so 
sensible, and all that. . . . You don’t seem to expect 
a man to be a stained-glass saint.” 

She laughed at that. 


308 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


“The stained glass generally depicts women,” she 
replied. “I expect that’s a general recognition that 
men aren’t quite the same. ... You have got to go 
into the world, and face things,” she added hastily, as 
though eager not to hurt his feelings by seeming to 
reflect disparagingly on his sex. “We are sheltered, 
as it were. You keep the evil off.” 

The effete feminine argument in defence of mascu- 
line laxity, which is one of its immoral encourage- 
ments, rather irritated him. He wondered impa- 
tiently why she never struck even by accident on an 
original thought. 

“I don’t know,” he returned vaguely. . . . “Men 
are different, anyhow.” 

“Yes,” she allowed. 

“And you don’t think me an altogether bad sort?” 
he asked. 

She looked at him shyly in the subdued light. He 
could have struck her for the almost fawning diffi- 
dence of that look; but her words so heartened him 
that he speedily forgave the rest. 

“I think you splendid,” she said. “I have heard 
my father and yours speak of the way in which you 
handled those Indians, and though they laughed and 
called it by the name of bluff, I know they thought 
you brave. Oh! it’s wonderful to be a man, — and 
fearless.” She clasped her hands together and looked 
at him earnestly. “They are proud of you,” she said, 
and added very softly, so softly that he scarcely 
heard, and guessed rather at the words : — “So am I.” 

There was something in a girl, after all, Johnson 
decided, when she could appreciate a man as Muriel 
appreciated him. They might call her a fool, if they 
liked, — it was his own epithet; he had never heard 
it applied to her by others — it took some discrimina- 
tion to realise that when a man acted as he had done, 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 309 


it was the right thing, the only thing, to do in the 
circumstances. And of course it was brave; there 
was always a risk, a risk of personal danger, when a 
man had to deal single handed with a lot of rebel- 
lious blacks. 

“Look here 1 ” he said abruptly. “Why shouldn't we 
marry ? . . . I’d like to marry you — honest now. . . . 
What do you say?” 

“Oh !” she cried, and turned slightly away from 
him, and hid her face. 

“You like me?” he said quickly, not really doubt- 
ing it, but a little taken aback at sight of her averted 
face. 

“Yes,” she murmured. She uncovered her face, 
and looked up at him, and then looked again swiftly 
away. “I like you. ... If you wish it, I don’t 
mind.” 

It was not altogether quite what the lovers of ro- 
mance would consider appropriate to the occasion, 
but it appeared to satisfy Johnson, and the girl whom 
he proposed to make his wife. They spent a mild, 
unexciting half-hour in one another’s society. He 
placed Alieta’s ring on her finger, with an agreeable 
feeling that he was getting even with Alieta some- 
how by his act, quite indifferent to the fact that the 
ring was rather big for its present wearer, or that 
Muriel might think him over confident in coming thus 
prepared. The thought did not occur to her. She 
was becomingly grateful, and she admired the ring 
immensely. 

Later they went in to receive the joyful congratu- 
lations of the parents of the girl. Inexplicably, 
neither Sir George Rath nor his wife demanded any- 
thing better for their eldest child. 

When Mrs. Johnson heard of the engagement, 
which was several days later, a spirit of vindictive- 


3io VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


ness prompting Harold Johnson to keep from her as 
long as possible the extreme gratification which he 
knew she would experience at his news, she was re- 
lieved beyond measure. Once again she could in- 
dulge her dreams of a fashionable wedding. Harold 
had got over his infatuation for that wretched, ob- 
scure Dutch girl, whom he would have had to marry 
in a Dutch church, and almost secretly. It seemed 
to her that Providence had intervened to stop so un- 
seemly an arrangement. It had been a mad impulse, 
the terrible step which her son had contemplated, — a 
generous, mad impulse, she felt assured. He was 
sane now ; the foolishness he had meditated was 
finally set aside. She was so genuinely relieved that 
she ordered half a dozen new frocks on the strength 
of his news. It reveals an odd twist in human nature 
that when most pleased we indulge our particular 
weakness. A drunkard similarly affected would have 
made a night of it. 

In becoming engaged to Mtiriel within two days of 
his dismissal from Alieta, Johnson felt that he had 
justified his manhood, and so was satisfied with the 
result, even while feeling bitterly resentful towards 
Alieta. Not having it in his power to punish her, 
he visited his resentment on his fiancee. He made a 
very unsatisfactory lover, irritable and indifferent. 
Muriel bore with his uncertain moods with surprising 
patience and good humour. If she was disappointed 
she contrived to conceal the fact. After all, she had 
got what she desired; one must pay in proportion to 
what one has. 

It was not so easy for Alieta as it was for Harold 
Johnson, this breaking of her engagement. She found 
it difficult to explain, with the reservations which 
loyalty to the Gommets demanded of her. Mrs. Van 
der Vyver, who suspected Heckraft of being the 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 31 1 

driving force in the disruption, was difficult to con- 
vince, in her disappointment at this break with a man 
of such brilliant prospects as young Johnson. It 
seemed, from her talk, that the man himself was of 
less importance than his position ; and this mercenary 
view angered Alieta; the fact that she and Harold 
were temperamentally unsuited did not appear to 
weigh with her mother at all. 

“Oh, that!” she exclaimed, when Alieta announced 
that she had neither respect nor love for the man she 
had engaged herself to marry, and had since dis- 
missed. “What does love matter after the first 
month? . . . And as for respect! — Does any woman 
in her senses respect a man ? They are all brutes . . . 
We can’t understand them. But the dear Lord has 
made them necessary to the continuance of the race. 
And they’re useful to do the hard work of the world 
while we are occupied with the finer, if heavier, work 
of bearing children. A man is only a mate. You 
don’t choose him out of respect, but because he can 
give you children, and provide for them and you.” 

“I want my mate for higher things than that,” 
Alieta replied steadily. “I want him to give me chil- 
dren, and to be a worthy father to them.” 

“Well, you won’t find him,” Mrs. Van der Vyver 
snapped, “until you get to heaven.” 

Mr. Van der Vyver treated the matter in a differ- 
ent spirit. He fought shy of the subject when alone 
with his daughter, but he gave her the idea that he 
was somehow sorry for her. She appealed to him 
directly on the subject one day, and because they 
were alone together and there was no evading it, he 
gave her his reluctant attention. 

“Don’t you think I did right,” she asked him, “to 
give up a man who, however advantageous his pros- 
pects, was not a good man?” 


312 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


“Goodness is comparative/’ he replied guardedly. 
“We are none of us perfect.” 

“Would you wish me to marry Harold Johnson,” 
she persisted, “if you knew, as I know, that he had 
led an evil life?” 

He sat up suddenly at the question. Alieta had suc- 
ceeded at last in gaining his undivided attention. He 
was very fond of his daughter, and very proud of her, 
and her happiness weighed more with him at that mo- 
ment than young Johnson’s wealth. 

“No,” he answered abruptly, — “no.” 

He pulled at his beard for a while, and looked 
fierce and undecided. 

^A bad man is a blot on the world’s creation,” he 
said reflectively. “It is not so very difficult to run 
straight — no! I want no evil sons-in-law,” he added 
with vehemence. 

He scrutinised her appraisingly. 

“But I hate waste — waste of fine material. . . . 
And I have enough — yes, I have enough to provide for 
a few small mouths.” 

Alieta, though she made no response, understood 
him perfectly. He wished to convey that if she 
elected to marry a man of no substance, he would 
undertake to see that all was well with her and with 
her children. She gathered that from his speech, 
and she was grateful to him that he did not put his 
meaning into plainer words. 


XXXV 


I T happened very opportunely for Heckraft that 
Sir George Rath should at this juncture offer 
him the management of the Ringhals estate. He 
had heard of the possibility of this offer being made 
to him from Mr. Johnson, who had written to him 
on the subject before the Indian rising, and who now 
wrote again, a generous, friendly letter, in which he 
offered his manager facilities for taking over his new 
job at an early date. 

Heckraft went down to Durban for an interview 
with Sir George. While at the coast he heard with 
some amazement of young Johnson’s engagement. 
Considering all things, it struck him that the man had 
moved with most indecent haste. But beyond the 
fact that this news told him that Alieta had acted 
upon the information she had received from him and 
broken her engagement, it did not particularly inter- 
est him, save that in an impersonal way he was sorry 
for the other girl. His own case, he recognised, was 
not affected in the least. He had prejudiced him- 
self in Alieta’s eyes, and won her contempt. 

He recognised in this attitude of Alieta’s towards 
him a strong sense of injustice. He felt that she 
placed him on a level with Johnson, and the thought 
tormented him. He wanted to go to her and attempt 
some justification of himself, to make her understand, 
and take a reasonable view of what was after all not 
such a disreputable situation as she appeared to con- 
sider it. He believed that she put him down for a 
313 


314 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


libertine of a peculiarly crooked and jealous dispo- 
sition. And he wanted to make her see that he was 
nothing of the sort, — it was of immense importance 
to him that she should be induced to realise that she 
did him a grave injustice in harbouring so base an 
idea. 

Only a sense of the absurdity of such a course kept 
him from going to her and making his appeal. But 
the thing fretted him almost beyond endurance; it 
kept him awake at nights, tossing restlessly on a bed 
that seemed to have no repose in it, chafing and impo- 
tent, at times bitterly resentful and angry, and again 
filled with a strange remorse for having fallen short 
of her standard, and a great tenderness towards 
Alieta, which mood was invariably succeeded by one 
of despondency. 

Despondency was the most enduring of his many 
mental phases. He had never in his life before ex- 
perienced such an intensity of misery as he now 
knew. It seemed to him that some quality which 
makes for gladness and beauty and all that is best 
in life, had passed out of his world, and left it blank 
and cheerless, like a windy, sunless scene on a grey 
day. 

His relations with the Gommets, too, had under- 
gone a change. Gommet had always in mind the con- 
fidence which an unguarded moment had wrung from 
him without his volition. He hated to think that 
Heckraft knew about his wife; the fact made him 
almost eager for the coming separation. There were 
times when he could not entirely hide the satisfac- 
tion he felt. Heckraft understood in some degree, 
but it hurt him none the less that this man whom he 
had liked so well, who had been such a good chum, 
should evince so unmistakably his eagerness to be 
quit of him. It seemed to him that there was no 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 315 


loyalty in friendship when a woman intervened. The 
bleakness was here too; it enveloped everything; it 
chilled affection, and invited distrust. 

Mrs. Gommet’s feelings were more complex. Her 
inclinations warred incessantly in curious contradic- 
toriness. Resentment against Heckraft caused her to 
share her husband’s anxiety for his speedy depar- 
ture, and again thoughts of the dullness of life when 
the manager had left and they two should be at 
Nooitgedacht together, alone, appalled her, and made 
her wish that things might go on as they were. Great 
chunks, as she put it, of her husband’s society and 
nothing to lighten it, was deadly in contemplation. 
And she did not see a way out, — not so much as a 
chink of a crack by which she could emerge into a 
freer world. She saw nothing for it but to go on 
as she was until the end of time. The outlook to her 
also appeared bleak beyond compare. 

“I believe you are glad to be leaving us,” she re- 
marked one evening to Heckraft. It was the last 
evening on which they would be alone together. The 
new manager and a young mechanic were coming on 
the morrow to take over from Gommet. She looked 
at him resentfully as she spoke across the narrow 
table. 

He made an indirect answer. 

“I suppose change appeals to most people,” he said, 
and forgot that at one time he had thought to finish 
out his span among the hills, and had been content 
with the prospect. 

“Particularly when it includes a rise in screw,” 
Gommet struck in. 

Mrs. Gommet smiled vindictively. 

“He’ll be growing rich, and getting married, I ex- 
pect,” she said. “That’s the next we shall hear.” 

He looked at her hard and made no answer. Mrs. 


3i 6 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


Gommet felt herself changing colour under the look. 
It seemed to her that his eyes accused her of what 
he would not put into words. Her remark had been 
provocative, almost a challenge. 

Gommet frowned at his wife’s speech. It brought 
to his mind things he would rather forget, and stirred 
up bitter memories that rankled still and would never 
be entirely buried. Abruptly he pushed back his chair 
and rose from the tea-table. 

“It’s odd,” he remarked to Heckraft, as he crossed 
to the window and started to fill his pipe, “to think 
of the changes, and the things that have happened 
since you first came. You seem to have been a dis- 
turbing force, and to have upset the serenity of this 
confounded hole.” 

“And yet nothing that has happened has been of 
my bringing about,” Heckraft said. 

“Directly, no. But I’ve been here ten years, and 
during the whole of that time there has been prac- 
tically no change in the order of things; you come, 
and within two years the whole place seems laid 
open to change, to a new system altogether, a verita- 
ble sweeping clean of established customs. To-mor- 
row the new men come in and our place knows us no 
more. They’ve swept out the Indians, and now it is 
the white man’s turn.” 

“You wouldn’t have remained, anyway,” Mrs. 
Gommet said, and started to clear the table. “You 
always meant to own Nooitgedacht. You know you 
are as pleased as possible really; but you must have 
your grumble. I’m glad the new men are coming. 
They’ll bring some fresh ideas, and liven us up a 
bit.” 

“They’ll bring us news of a sort, I suppose,” Gom- 
met allowed grudgingly. “I’m keen to hear how 
things are actually going. From the papers the strike 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 317 

seems to be sizzling out. It was never more than 
half-hearted; the poor devils were intimidated by 
their leaders; and, in the main, their leaders were 
right. But they’ll be forced to climb down ; they 
can’t stand out against the government. They’ll 
come to some compromise that won’t satisfy anyone, 
and in a few years’ time the whole trouble will crop 
up again. . . . Like the trouble in July on the Rand. 
Things are looking ugly there. Seems as though the 
Colony was in for a big railway strike.” 

“Let us hope wiser counsels will prevail,” Heck- 
raft observed. 

Gommet laughed. 

“That’s the stick-in-the-mud way in which you con- 
servative minded people always take these questions 
until the trouble is in your midst. . . . Look ahead, 
man; that’s the only way to prevent trouble.” 

“Some people look ahead so far that they invite 
trouble,” Heckraft retorted. 

“Oh! What’s the use of arguing with Joe?” Mrs. 
Gommet said. “Are you going to carry the tray for 
me, Tony?” 

Heckraft lifted the tray and carried it out, as he 
had been in the habit of doing since they had been 
without servants. Mrs. Gommet had always made 
this an opportunity for coquetry, but she was coquet- 
tish no longer; the manager’s manner was not en- 
couraging of these practices. He made scant effort 
now to conceal his dislike of her intimate moods. 

“You are angry with me about something, Tony,” 
she said. 

She looked up at him deliberately, with innocent 
inquiry in her eyes. She had come to a sudden reso- 
lution. She wanted to know if she was correct in 
surmising that what she had told Alieta had produced 
the result she had hoped for. She meant to brazen 


318 valley of a thousand hills 


it out. It would not have disconcerted her at the 
moment if he had accused her openly of treachery. 
The coming of those other men on the morrow would 
relieve the unpleasantness consequent on their strained 
relations, and on the following day Heckraft himself 
would be gone. She felt that she would like him to 
know what he owed to her before he left and passed 
out of her life forever. Some quality of meanness 
in her composition made her desire that intensely. 
She longed to see him wince. But Heckraft had no 
intention of giving her the satisfaction she sought. 
He set down the tray of things he had carried out 
for her on the spotless kitchen table, and faced her 
squarely where she stood beside the table, looking up 
at him with puzzled, disingenuous eyes. 

“You don’t really think that,” he said, regarding 
her quizzically. “Was ever any man actually angry 
with you?” 

“Oh! plenty times,” she simpered, under the im- 
pression that he was intending a compliment. 

“More fool the man, then,” he returned coolly. 
“Td as readily lose my temper with a mischievous 
child.” 

“But I’m not a child,” she pouted. 

“Aren’t you? ... I have my doubts. You have 
not grown up yet, anyway.” 

“I’m older than you think,” she said, a little uncer- 
tain now as to the implied compliment. 

He smiled suddenly. 

“Oh, years! What do years signify? I was re- 
ferring to the mind.” 

Mrs. Gommet flushed. 

“I think you are very rude,” she said. 

“I am,” he acknowledged. “It is one of my domi- 
nant characteristics that I have always been brutally 
frank” 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 319 


She considered this. 

“You are angry with me,” she declared. . . . 
“That’s your way of getting even with me.” 

“Getting even with you 1 ” he repeated, and eyed her 
curiously. “What for?” 

She turned away petulantly, with a slight lift of 
the chin. She had never, he thought, looked so wiz- 
enedly childish and altogether ridiculous as at that 
moment. As he had described her, so she appeared 
to him, a woman with the mind of a mischievous 
child. Nature had proceeded with her in one direc- 
tion, and stood still in another; the more important, 
the finer part of her, was suffering from arrested 
development. 

A moment of triumph seized her when he had left 
the kitchen. 

“He does know,” she said, and looked vixenish and 
entirely pleased. 

But this brief triumph was followed by a very un- 
usual remorse. 

“It was mean,” she mused. . . . “Yes, it was 
mean. ... I wish I hadn’t done it.” 

And then, after a pause, and with a splash of plates 
into the washing-up bowl, — • 

“I don’t care.” . . . 

That last was significant of the speaker’s attitude 
towards life generally, the attitude of a mind which 
has lost, or probably never possessed, the power to 
balance results in relation to, and consequent upon, 
acts. When an impulse prompted her, she yielded 
to it; her matter-of-fact acceptance of what followed 
was almost masculine. It could not be helped; there 
was nothing more to be said. 

Heckraft went back to the sitting-room. Gommet 
was seated in his usual corner, smoking, with a paper 


320 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


open on his knees. He looked round as the other 
man entered. 

“You never told me,” he said, “that the cub was 
engaged to Rath’s daughter. It’s here — in the Mer- 
cury.” 

“I didn’t suppose it would interest you,” Heck- 
raft returned. 

Gommet slapped the paper on his knee with a 
hairy, vehement hand. 

“God! What fools some women are!” he mut- 
tered. “I suppose if she knew he was a blackguard, 
it wouldn’t make a ha’porth of difference to her. 
Some women don’t seem to mind. . . . Alieta’s not 
that sort. She wouldn’t have him, I take it. . . . I 
never thought that affair would come off.” 

He took a knife from his pocket and ripped out 
the paragraph and burnt it. Heckraft, watching him, 
formed the idea that he did so in order to prevent 
the news catching his wife’s eye. 

“I had fancied you were going in there, Tony,” 
Gommet resumed after a pause. He fidgeted with 
his pipe and sucked at it noisily. “Alieta is a woman 
in a thousand. You’ll be a bigger fool than I take 
you for, if you don’t seize your opportunity. Sup- 
pose you go out of this, — who’s to say you’ll find her 
waiting when it occurs to you to come back?” 

“You are altogether out, Joe,” Heckraft answered 
quietly. “I’ve had my try, but it wasn’t a bit of use.” 

Gommet was properly amazed. 

“Well, I’m blowed!” was all he could ejaculate. 

He seemed to have further trouble with his pipe 
and drew at it hard. Finally he put the pipe down. 

“I’m sorry, old man,” he jerked out awkwardly. “I 
wouldn’t have mentioned it if I’d had any idea.” 

“That’s all right,” Heckraft said. 

He stepped out through the window, and stood for 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 321 


a moment on the stoep, bathed in the after-glow of the 
setting sun. 

“I’ve proposed to her twice,” he said, looking away 
towards the road, the sunlit glow in his eyes, “and 
she refused me. Since then I have written to her, 
but — I have had no reply.” 

He wheeled about, and stepping off the stoep, 
started to walk up the road, going at a tremendous 
rate, as a man travels who has some definite object 
in view, — the object, possibly, of outpacing his own 
thoughts. 

He wanted her, wanted her urgently. It seemed to 
him that he would never be able to subdue the hungry 
craving for her which every mention of her name, 
every moment's thought of her, created in him afresh. 
Life without her was one long starvation, a ceaseless 
demand for her presence with no possibility of its 
gratification. 

There were moments, moments of exasperated fu- 
tility, when he felt he must carry her, carry her by 
sheer force, — by strength of will, — physical strength, 
— win her somehow violently. But the mood of stark 
madness was invariably followed by a mood of cor- 
responding sanity. A man does not woo roughly in 
these days, that is not with success. And if she 
would not come to him willingly, with all her heart 
for him, and all her trust, it were better for him in 
the long run that he should go hungry for her for 
the rest of his days. 


XXXVI 


H ECKRAFT did not walk far; his steps lagged 
as he got out of view of the house, and a 
certain weariness, an air of dejection, took 
the place of the more purposeful look with which he 
had started forth. 

After all, what was there to walk for? There was 
no aim in walking, not even exercise; he had had all 
the physical exercise he needed that day. Nor could 
he by changing his ground get rid of his thoughts. 
They accompanied him along the steep ascent, where 
so many memories met him mockingly as he climbed 
the dusty road in the failing light, climbed slowly 
now, with dragging footsteps, and tired, accustomed 
eyes which viewed the surrounding scene with a sense 
of familiarity, and yet also with a feeling of strange- 
ness, as though the hills wore a different aspect from 
that which he had known, an aspect more remote, 
less intimate and friendly. They seemed to have 
withdrawn from him, to be altogether less accessible, 
less a part of the life of the place. It was perhaps, 
he reflected, because he had always in his mind asso- 
ciated Alieta with the hills, — they had made a back- 
ground for her. 

He reached a curve in the road, and gazed upward. 
The land rose sharply above him, and all the hillside 
was dark with wattles which spread over it, a carpet 
of unrelieved green. The summit of the hill was 
crowned with them; the tops of the thin belt of trees 
showed dense like tightly packed fir trees, while the 
slim trunks revealed between each a thin line of 
322 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 323 

light from the sky. Odd, but he had never noticed 
before how the sky showed between the naked 
trunks. 

He climbed a little higher. Round the next bend 
he had met with his unpleasant encounter with 
Hantz. He recalled that meeting with the madman, 
the helpless feeling of terror that had seized him, his 
strong hold on life which had made death seem so 
awful. Death had been very near that day. In the 
bitter mood of the moment, he was of the opinion 
that it was almost a pity that Hantz had not finished 
his job, and settled his difficulties forever. But at 
the time how he had struggled for life! . . . 

He reached a further point in the road, and halting, 
walked to the edge and looked out across the valley. 
He saw, as something fresh, the hills stretching away 
endlessly in a continuous chain, a continuous variety, 
— rounded hills covered with verdure, hills with 
sharper summits, and again others, square-topped 
and flat, melting into the atmosphere, a suggestion of 
grey outline showing wanly against the sky. Far be- 
low gleamed the metals of the railway, winding in 
extraordinarily sharp, snake-like curves between its 
narrow banks. 

In the waning light the hills detached themselves, 
stood out With new and surprising beauty, arresting 
and strangely moving. Their summits and slopes re- 
vealed bright, unexpected colours; a soft light green 
flowed over them, stained with patches of wattle like 
dark blots on the lighter background, and smaller 
patches of cultivation, where the dark man grew his 
mealies, and again small clearings on which he 
erected his reed-thatched, mud and wattle hut. 

As he looked, Heckraft experienced a sudden re- 
vulsion of feeling. The sense of failure, of bit- 


324 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


terness, fell away from him. Once more he had 
himself in hand. The hills breathed courage and a 
dignified serenity that insensibly affected him, that 
gripped him somehow; pointing out, as they seemed 
to point out, with a startling clearness the dignity of 
life, and the want of appreciation of the individual 
who allows himself to be mastered by his circum- 
stances. While not attempting to dull the emotions, 
no man should be subject to them. To ignore the 
power which is in one to soar above adverse circum- 
stances is to ignore what is highest and best in human 
nature, the divine right of the individual to be arbi- 
trator in his own life. 

Heckraft moved abruptly, and turned, and con- 
tinued his way up the hill. 

“If only I had her here with me now/’ he mused, 
“she would understand. . . . She would know. . . .” 

He thought for a while and walked on. 

“One day,” he reflected, “I shall go to her again, — 
one day soon.” 

Then he turned about abruptly, moved by a fresh 
thought, and retraced his steps. 

He went to the hotel and wrote a note to Alieta, 
which he entrusted to the charge of a Kaffir. He 
sent the Kaffir off on horseback to Odsani. In the 
note he reminded her that the morrow was his last 
day in Drummond. He asked her to meet him at 
sunset at a certain point in the road, — the point where 
he had stood that evening and looked across the wind- 
ing valley between its sentinel hills. 

He went back to the house, flushed and satisfied, 
with a bearing altogether more cheery and hopeful 
than he had worn of late. When he entered, Gommet 
was drinking whisky, and Mrs. Gommet sat near the 
lamp with the table littered with material, making 
herself a dress. She looked surprised at his quick 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 325 


return, — surprised and manifestly curious at his 
changed appearance. 

“You look as though you had enjoyed your walk,” 
she said. 

“I have,” he returned. 

“You are as unsociable as Joe. . . . You might 
have asked me to go.” 

“Come now,” he suggested. 

“No; Fm busy. . , . Play to me instead. . . . I’m 
dull.” 

That was her usual plaint, he reflected as he fetched 
his violin. She was one of those people who always 
desire to be amused. 

But the music was more to Mrs. Gommet than 
mere amusement. It spoke to her, as the hills spoke 
to Heckraft; it brought out what was best in her. 
That night, when she wished him good night before 
following her husband to their room, she lingered a 
while, irresolute, an unaccountable impulse moving her 
to confession. The confession hung back for a time 
while she pondered the folly of speech. Finally her 
better self conquered, and she lifted a pair of sincere, 
quite serious eyes to his. 

“I told her that you kissed me,” she said in a half- 
shamed, half-sullen voice. 

“I was afraid so,” he returned, not attempting to 
misunderstand. 

She hesitated a further moment. He remained 
quite still, watching her curiously. 

“I made more of it than there was any need for,” 
she went on after a silence. ... “I made quite a 
lot of it. . . . Fm sorry, Tony,” she added, flushing 
beneath his look. 

“So am I,” he said harshly. “It — places me in a 
difficult position. IBs Oh ! well, it is done, any- 

how, isn’t it?” 


326 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 


She moved away, dissatisfied, a little disappointed 
by his manner of receiving her confession. But at 
the door some further impulse prompted her to pause 
and give him the benefit of her knowledge of her own 
sex. 

“If she cares for you — in the right way,” she re- 
marked a trifle ungraciously, “what I said to her 
won’t make any real difference — in the long run.” 

The following evening before sunset Heckraft set 
out on his walk. He reached the place where he had 
asked Alieta to meet him, and paced slowly up and 
down, waiting for her, with his hands clasped behind 
him, and his eyes on the setting sun. 

He was hopeful, — there was nothing capricious 
about Alieta, — but he was at the same time not confi- 
dent that she would come. If she failed him, he knew 
that it would mean that she did not wish him to hope. 
Nevertheless, he decided that, if she did not come, he 
would walk out to Odsani that same evening for a 
final word with her. He would — he must see her 
once again. 

The sun sank below the hills, and the glory of the 
after-glow suffused the sky with splashes of gold and 
crimson, and soft pinks and saffrons like the lights 
in the facets of a jewel. The hills were bathed in a 
wonderful radiance, which warmed and gilded their 
summits with a dazzling brilliancy, and added a hun- 
dred beauties that the sun alone can lend. 

Heckraft watched the changing scene while he 
waited with eager impatience for the coming of 
Alieta, — watched the fires die in the west, and the 
brilliance fade, and long shadows steal forth imper- 
ceptibly from the shade in advance of night and lie 
along the hillsides. Denser shadows filled the valley. 
The air changed in quality, grew cooler, as the mist 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 327 


began to gather, a white, soft mist like a billowy cloud 
leaning from the blue ether to shroud the hills. 

The thought came to him, as he watched the scene, 
that all this was symbolic of life. This beautiful val- 
ley, winding among its mighty hills, was the Valley of 
Life, set about and guarded by the heights of the 
Mind’s Ideals. Occasionally the mists gather, the 
heights are obscured, and the Valley overshadowed 
by a cloud which is named Mistrust. But always be- 
hind the cloud shines the illuminating, glorifying 
light of the sun, which is the World’s Truth. 

The idea pleased him; he dwelt on it for a while. 
Always he had felt the greatness of the hills as well 
as the wonder of them, their direct influence upon 
mankind. The connection between man and the earth 
dates back to the beginning of things. 

And then abruptly he became aware of Alieta’s 
approach. She was riding the big bay horse on which 
he had so often seen her mounted across the boun- 
dary fence of Odsani, riding it slowly, at a walking 
pace. This fact — the slowness of her approach — 
conveyed an impression to him that she came reluc- 
tantly. He had meant as soon as he saw her to 
hasten to meet her ; but a new shyness seized him, an 
extraordinary sense of uncertainty as to what he 
ought to do. He stood in the road, undecided, feel- 
ing awkward and inadequate ; she had ridden to 
within a few paces of him before he moved. Then in 
a moment he became cool and clear-headed again. 
He went forward and stood close to her horse, look- 
ing up at her, and the light of love lit his eyes. 

“Dear. ... It was kind of you to come,” he said. 

She remained quite still, looking down at him 
gravely. 

“I didn’t know — you were going away,” she said. 

“Would it have made a difference — to your coming 


328 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 

now, I mean,” he asked, — “if I had not been going 
away ?” 

Alieta hesitated. A flush came to her face, and 
her glance fell. 

“No,” she answered after a while. 

Heckraft could have shouted with the relief which 
her answer gave him. 

“I want you to get down,” he said, “and stand be- 
side me. ... I want to tell you things.” 

She relinquished the reins to him, and he put up 
his arms and lifted her from the saddle, and set her 
on her feet. He tethered the horse to a tree by the 
roadside; then he joined her where she stood, hold- 
ing up her riding-skirt, and watching his movements 
attentively, with deep, gravely wondering eyes. 

“You must have thought it odd, my asking you to 
come to me,” he began. 

“No,” she said simply. 

He looked pleased. 

“I was half afraid you might not see it quite in the 
way it was intended,” he said. “I wanted you here — 
just at this spot, where everything is so immense, so 
fine, — where the hills speak to one, and the free even- 
ing air blows the fever and stress of the daytime 
away. ... I came here yesterday, with my nerves 
jarring and at dissonance with everything about me, 
and this,” he indicated the view with a movement of 
his hand, “put that right for me, somehow. ... I 
wanted you then — badly. ... I fancied if you stood 
beside me here, among the big, simple things of na- 
ture, I might make you understand better what I 
tried to make you understand the last time we met, 
and failed to, because I bungled matters, put matters 
badly, and merely disgusted you.” 

“Only for the time,” she answered. 

She looked at the view for a space, and then turned 


VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 329 

her face deliberately, and met his gaze with steadfast, 
shining eyes. 

“It was just because I loved you so that I felt so 
badly hurt,” she said softly. “It is because I love 
you that I understand why you asked me to come to 
you — here, — why I was glad you asked me. It 
proved your confidence in me.” 

He took her hand. 

“Oh, Alieta!” he said. . . . “Oh! my dear! . . 

His voice shook with the stress of his emotion. He 
gripped her hand tighter and drew her to him, and 
for a while they clung together without speaking, lip 
to lip, heart to heart, two human beings in a perfect 
harmony of love and understanding, apart from the 
world of men and women, sheltered from it by the 
immensities of the new world in which they stood. 

She broke away from him presently, and stood back 
a little, looking at him, blushing and smiling, with 
odd gleams and lights in her eyes that made them 
extraordinarily beautiful. 

“I have a confession to make also,” she said, and 
her voice was softer and sweeter than it had ever 
sounded before in his ears, her smile more tender, 
more quietly content. “I have loved you always. . . . 
When my lips said No to you, my heart cried aloud 
Yes. I thought you knew that my lips lied. . . . But, 
ah ! my dear, you never knew what that lie cost me. 
... If I have been hard and difficult, dearest heart, 
it was just my unsatisfied longing that made me so.” 

“Alieta!” he said. . . , “Alieta! . . .” 

He reached for and found her hand and held it 
tightly clasped in his. Words failed him. He wanted 
to tell her a hundred things and could tell her none. 
Alieta pressed closer to his side. She emitted a soft, 
low, happy laugh that was, despite its happiness, verg- 
ing close on tears. 


330 VALLEY OF A THOUSAND HILLS 

“But you were letting me go out of your life,” he 
said, suddenly recalling that but for his letter she 
would not be beside him now. . . . “Think, if I 
hadn’t written, — if you hadn’t come to-night. . . 

“I would never have let you go out of my life, 
dear,” she interposed softly. “I was wondering, when 
your letter came, how I could go to you and tell you 
that. . . . Dear, I wanted to come.” Her voice 
broke in a sob. “I was so glad, so glad, that you 
asked me to come.” 

She looked at him, with her face flushed, and the 
tears welling in her eyes. His own eyes were alight 
with a passion of love. He caught her in his em- 
brace and kissed her with a great tenderness upon 
the lips. 

“Mine!” he said, and kissed her lips again. . . . 
“My mate. . . .” 

The mist grew denser ; it enveloped them, and shut 
out the view as it rolled slowly, like some inexorable 
fate, down through the valley. Side by side they 
stood, with clasped hands, shoulder to shoulder, 
watching it, — looking away into immense distances, 
talking little, thinking of many things, and feeling in- 
tensely the joy and the wonder of life. . . . 

Ah! beautiful valley — Valley of a Thousand Hills 
— Valley of Life, threading its inevitable way among 
the lofty heights of big thoughts, and great and simple 
truths. 


BY THE SAME AUTHOR 


The Purple Mists 

Crown 8vo. 6/ - 


SOME PRESS OPINIONS 


Outlook. “ It is pleasant to watch an author gradually increasing 
his range and there is no doubt at all that Miss Mills Young s 
latest story is the best thing she has done. It is all interest- 
ing and readable. As always, the South African background 
is beautifully and impressively painted.” 

Guardian. “In this new story of the Karroo and of Cape Town 
she is again extraordinarily successful in presenting South 
African life and atmosphere. The character of Euretta is 
very cleverly expressed.” 

Pall Mall Gazette. “An already high reputation will be greatly 
enhanced by Miss Mills Young’s novel. The last chapter 
is a most powerful and touching piece of writing. The whole 
book indeed is admirably done, and holds the grateful atten- 
tion of the reader from first to last. The characters are 
strong and true and drawn with a master hand.” 

Saturday Review. “Miss Mills Young’s new novel marks a 
distinct advance in her work. She writes with vigour and 
her pictures of the veldt are particularly well done.” 

Morning Post. “ ‘The Purple Mists’ deserves and should find 
a large and appreciative circle of readers.” 

T. P.’s Weekly. “Bears the impress of actual experience and a 
hero who is of flesh and blood.” 


Daily Express. “The book is an obvious best seller . 

Sunday Times. “Miss Mills Young has certainly never written 
a more powerful story — a faithfulness, delicacy and humour 
that call for the highest praise.” 


LONDON: JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD 
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY 
TORONTO: BELL AND COCKBURN 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 


Myles Calthorpe, I. D. B. 

Crown 8vo. 6s. 

SOME PRESS OPINIONS 

Pall Mall Gazette. — “In everything the story is mov- 
ing, tender and profoundly eloquent.” 

Punch. — “Miss Young writes in a most vivid man- 
ner, and her book can be warmly recommended to any- 
one who is likely to be exhilarated by the spectacle of 
a great fight against misfortune.” 

Court Journal. — “Without exception the most im- 
portant, the most moving and the most realistic story 
of South African life we have read for some time. It 
is a pleasure to commend the book to all who appreciate 
originality, dramatic power and intense realism. There 
are many scenes of singular power and charm.” 

Daily Graphic. — “Miss Mills Young writes with seri- 
ousness and intensity of feeling. ‘Myles Calthorpe, I. 
D. B.’ is an extremely readable story which should 
please all lovers of good fiction.” 

Anthenceum. — “Unusually well told . . full of reality 

and intensity.” 

Country Life. — “The book is remarkable for the 
courageous and just way in which the author has 
handled the problem.” 

Field. — “The atmosphere and characterisation are 
alike excellent.” 

New Witness. — “A good story . . . the characterisa- 
tion is clever and; the writing fresh.” 

Daily Express. — “There are passages of beauty in the 
book.” 

Standard. — “The author again displays her dramatic 
sense, but she keeps her hold on reality and there is re- 
straint in her most poignant passages.” 

Birmingham Daily Post. — “Placed in a realistic set- 
ting the story moves with quick dramatic power from 
start to finish.” 


LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD 
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY 
TORONTO: BELL & COCKBURN 


BY THE SAME AUTHOR 


CHIP & 

SOME PRESS OPINIONS 

Times . — “The story never fails to hold the reader’s at- 
tention.” 

Athenceum . — “A tale ... of unusual romantic in- 
terest.” 

Daily Chronicle . — “A vivid and authentic picture.” 
Morning Post. — “Original, vivid, and realistic.” 
Observer . — “A most readable story.” 


A MISTAKEN 
MARRIAGE 6s 

SOME PRESS OPINIONS 

Bookman . — “This is a good and even distinguished 
piece of work. . . . The interest is held throughout the 
book” 

Queen . — “There are two points on which ‘A Mistaken 
Marriage’ is superior to many modern novels — the 
characterisation and the atmosphere. The former is 
excellent. Every one in the book is alive. The at- 
mosphere is real.” 

Scotsman . — “It seizes powerfully the imagination and 
the sympathy of the reader.” 

Dundee Advertiser . — “It is a piece of sound com- 
position, showing a real knowledge of Anglo-African 
life.” 

Newcastle Chronicle . — “A vigorous story.” 


LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD 
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY 
TORONTO: BELL & COCKBURN 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 


GRIT LAWLESS 

Crown 8vo. 6s. 

SOME PRESS OPINIONS 

Vanity Fair. — “Miss Mills Young certainly knows her 
South Africa, and she also knows how to spin a clever 
and interesting yarn.” 

Westminster Gazette. — “. . . It . carries us along 
breathlessly . . . the book is moving, and it is true. 
And while she concentrates on the two chief figures, 
she handles equally well those with whom they come in 
contact, while the story is vigorous and full of exciting 
incident.” 

Daily Telegraph. — “Even the most callous novel- 
reader will find enough quality in these chapters to 
keep his attention on the stretch from start to finish.” 

Globe. — “ . . . That indefinable charm which is the 
most notable feature of !ss Young’s writings.” 

Literary World. — “The story is told with a graphic 
touch, and holds us from the beginning to the end.” 

Sunday Times. — “So far as we know, Miss F. E. 
Mills Young has in ‘Grit Lawless’ broken fresh ground 
for the novelist. Certainly, we cannot for the moment 
recall any other writer who has described the society 
life of Cape Town with such vivacity and with such 
seeming first-hand knowledge. . . . One of the most 
thrilling stories we have come across this season.” 

Mr. Ralph Straus in the Bystander. — “At once well 
written and remarkably exciting.” 

Sketch. — “Miss Mills Young proves herself once more 
an excellent story-teller.” 

Sunday Times. Johannesburg. — “Miss Mills Young 
has many capital novels to her credit. ‘Grit Lawless’ 
is a splendid story of South African life.” 


LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD 
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY 
TORONTO: BELL & COCKBURN 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 


SAM’S KID 6s 


SOME PRESS OPINIONS 

Daily Telegraph.— “ With the true hand of an artist, 
Miss Mills Young has written a fresh and very mov- 
ing love story. . . . Certainly a novelist of exceptional 
gifts.” 

Daily Chronicle . — “This is true art. ‘Sam’s Kid’ one 
hails with enthusiasm.” 

Globe. — “Miss Mills Young has learned the art of all 
others most desirable in a novelist, namely, that of 
making her characters alive, so that their tears and 
laughter are real, and hold us from cover to cover.” 

Truth. — “Considerable knowledge of subject, and 
power to adapt it to the human story.’ 

Sunday Times. — “Miss Mills Young may be con- 
gratulated upon having produced a worthy successor to 
‘Atonement.’ ” 

Yorkshire Post. — “Miss Mills Young is a clever 
writer, and she infuses her characters with vivacity and 
life, making a graphic and very readable story of South 
African life.” 

Evening Standard. — “It has the lovable qualities of 
‘Chip,’ and the dramatic possibilitites of ‘Atonement,’ 
and will keep up the writer’s reputation.” 

Field. — “Miss Mills Young shows skill in construction 
and in her choice of incidents.” 

Literary World. — “The story is extraordinarily vivid 
and sympathetic.” 


LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD 
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY 
TORONTO: BELL & COCKBURN 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 


ATONEMENT 6s 


SOME PRESS OPINIONS 

Athenceum. — “The story is forceful and neatly con- 
structed, and skill is shown in the characterisation.” 

Times. — . . handled with a firm grasp in a well- 
knit and moving sequence of events.” 

Daily Chronicle. — “A vigorous and striking story . . . 
it rings true. Unusually well told, and the author’s 
power to describe places is as clear and incisive as it is 
in defining his characters.” 

Outlook. — “ ‘Atonement’ is an unusual kind of novel. 
Miss Mills Young can tell a story.” 

Daily News. — “There is some capable work in ‘Atone- 
ment.’ The story is very well told, and the interest 
sustained. The book is well above the average.” 

Morning Post. — “A powerful and interesting novel 
. . . a number of well-described incidents.” 

Globe. — “Character definition is a strong point of the 
author, who writes with a sympathetic firmness, an 
easy style, and an unusual sense of the dramatic.” 

Observer. — “ ‘Atonement’ is a striking book, full of 
good and thoughtful work. . . . Excellent.” 

Daily Telegraph 4 — “The author certainly has the 
power of making her stories interesting.” 

Pall Mall Gazette. — “ ‘Atonement’ is a strong book in- 
deed — growing stronger at every chapter. It lifts the 
author at a bound to the level of those whose work 
counts.” 

Academy. — “The author Is a writer of considerable 
power and originality.” 


LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD 
NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY 
TORONTO: BELL & COCKBURN 





— • 


. 5 ^ 


A * n , x * <6 << "l . . s * A o. •/ n , A 

* v« 



0 N <» 


^ ft * * s A lift 

# . <f* -Ap * v 8 

•» -T-V-C. A J u . X 

ut'A ■'" ”>*, «\\ n 

" ' K 

<X 1 x> 

* P ' x 0 o 

>> <<• j' 

, .'■*■ 0 ° «- % 

*"'* </ 

^ A * 

v v 




* % ”** ^ A-A 

~0 (“P * ^ ^ 

V ^ AA\\Uf%. ' 

-t •>» V © 

* O 0 x 

° -o 5 ^ ^ 

> A~ ^ 


ft ft 1 ' 


s* -i-, ^ ^ * a.' 

s » * f ^ -On 0 

\ C‘ V , 




*fu ^ *-£/ 'jy-^p o> 

/-- ^'(yv -v ^ o 

* » I a * \ 0 * 'c 

" 1 _N. x ft « 

"< * o „ ^ .<r <. s 7 // 



V ^ v * o , > 

,y v> ^ ^ a*’ W'* ^ v, ^ 

^ v * ° ^ v’ " ^ ™ ' * - aV " 1 

c5> A* _ V .* / ,v ,o 



tP A 



% ^fy 

* ^ ft N 


• 0 V C 



A 

v &Z /1 f 
^ »s. | / /4 

*> 

/ y y y 2 ~> * V* ^ 

•< r oo^ 

Ss 0 ^. 

1 1 \Y 

y * \ 

fe-; .<> ; 



r 

*y C> 



< '*>p ^ A 

* %■ .& •*• 

<s> ,<\ ® 

%e : 

i? <?' * 



^ <y* s ' 

A' s 

"o ^ & * 

° *>* <y o 

* aV^ " d I 

AV V> © W/i 

=> - o 

y tr 


s 

« <?' A 

A- .A 


$% 


o. 





f *P vi 

- ^ v + ' . 

x° * 

\V '-<• * c z ///M N ^ ^ 

o»' <^v ^ ^ <} c- „> ' * o r 

A „ * -*,'>'' ' '' J- s'*; : *<fc *»*•.' v \\„.., - » • 

*■«»*- •*. A* V .* * 

, . : ^ ^ - $mh \ % < 

° kn&m; ,$ % - » •*> * 


* 



. » 


* o c . ^ 

■ AT ’o, 

P s'** '* *%> 

V V ✓ f' 

« V’ 



o *tv 

•s \ v V, ^ 


>■ w* 


<v 


* 

V» 



>y %<> 




%• a*' 


■v * 


..s' % 



- ^ 4 3 N 

>v cv 


0 ^ ^ -is a 

^ 'o. ^ A° N r 

O .CV* c 0 c 

0 * Ct^s V ^ 

* . -.A- VA ✓ -5 

» ■< *o o* ° “1 V 


o 

o 

21 

'K< 

<A 

V 

SJ / 

/ ^ 

7^3*3 

o 


<p^ 


t : ;l 


* i * aO X 


,-CT > 


& 

s a* 


« i ' 


’ ° o5 ^ »■ ^ 

v . ■'* ^MAYCSr’ > \V •^f. * 

£>' 'O ' * 0 N 0 °* ^ l ' * 

X. 1 -'K— ^ ■ >s f«- ■* ». jrt (>. ^ 

^ -P 

o < 





" <& "•> 


.V <i»- . 



X v - ftV ^ 

y y . c s <\ \D j n . -& .(*v ^ X/ / c s 

^ / yyz *;% > s v 

s\ Z^.' 1 //X -^~> ^ 


- 0 s 


-0° C b '* 0 N ^‘>* o> 

s ^ ^ 

* \V <* 



0 



w> OyV 

if' ,^v 


^ a c* ^ 

\ v 'b 4 8 I 1 ^ 

\> > .0 V . S\V 1 '/, V 

^ - « » V * ^ > " 


A 



%s V 

•y 


r av ^ 






